Contractors work inside the new facility at Prairie Gleaners. (Photo Courtesy Kevin Kyle)

By Chris Brown

Prairie Gleaners expects to be in new facility in the spring

Nov 24, 2022 | 3:40 PM

CYPRESS COUNTY, AB – As food shortages and food insecurity become more prevalent each year, the work of one local volunteer organization becomes more important.

Prairie Gleaners Society takes off-grade vegetables unable to be sold and dehydrates and packages them for distribution locally and to be shipped to other parts of Canada and around the world.

In October 2021, the ground was broken on a new facility that board member Jim Grossman says will allow them to increase output and feed more people. The group hoped to be in the new facility now but work has been slower than hoped due to supply issues and busy contractors. The new opening date is slated for the spring.

The work on the outside is mostly complete and attention will soon shift to the interior,” says Grossman.

“We have four dehydrators to put in. We’ve got the funds for two of them due to some very generous donors who have donated towards that. Our cooler is going to be one and a half times the size that our current one is and then all kinds of things on the interior,” he says. “So on the one end is going to be the cooler on the other end is going to be the dehydrators and then in the middle is going to be all kinds of different things like storage and stuff that has to go on.”

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Grossman says the layout of the current facility, which was once a meat packing plant, is inefficient for Prairie Gleaners’ operations. There’s a lot of backtracking and moving of products in and out and through different rooms.

“With the new building we’ll be able to have the dehydration and the cooling system over there,” he explains. “The cutting room then will be able to change places within the facility and we’re hoping to have a complete oval kind of thing happening.”

Grossman says it’s been an amazing year for Prairie Gleaners.

Close to 280,000 kilograms of vegetables have been processed, the majority of which has gone to aid in the Ukraine and neighbouring countries where war refugees have fled. About 250,000 kilograms of were processed last year.

The whole idea here is that with that new facility we will be able to increase again because of the world shortage of food,” Grossman adds.