New Brunswick food forest helping to tackle food insecurity

New Brunswick has one of the highest food insecurity rates in Canada and now a church on Fredericton's north side has set aside some land to help.

The St. Mary's Food Forest is currently coming up on its second harvest.

"It's a tangible way that we can address food insecurity and create this area that's kind of like a living food bank,” said Andrew Mathis, with St. Mary's Food Forest.

“I hope (it's) is a different perspective on how we can tackle the problem,” Mathis added.

People can pick what they need from the food forest, but those who run it also like to help other food insecurity initiatives in the capital.

Fredericton Community Kitchens served more than 190,000 meals last year -- and the need is only increasing.

"We're kind of scrambling to keep up with it with our infrastructure and our budgets,” said executive director Cassandra LeBlanc. “We're also seeing a huge growth here at the community kitchen where we do our daily meal – we have new faces all the time.”

“There's a lot of work to be done to turn back the clock to where we were before the pandemic to where we are today,” LeBlanc added.

A 2022 study from PROOF, a research program at the University of Toronto, found 19 per cent of New Brunswick household residents worried about food access between 2020 and 2021.

"When we have excess produce that nobody seems to be coming in and harvesting, we will pick a bunch of it and donate it to these different food insecurity groups so that they can provide it to their networks of people that are in need,” Mathis said.

Fredericton's community kitchen is gearing up to serve those in need.

During the school year, they provide 250 to 300 lunches a day and a backpack of food to take home on the weekends.

"Pre-pandemic, we would see 80 to maybe 100 backpacks a week,” LeBlanc said.

“Now, we are hitting 200 or more a week, and so we just expect those numbers to increase.”

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