Views Sought on Growing Food in the Red Zone

The Food Resilience Network is hosting a public consultation session on options for growing food in the Christchurch Residential Red Zone. The session will be held this Sunday, 2 August, 11am-3pm in the Christchurch Botanic Gardens Visitors’ Centre.

“There is massive public interest in future uses for the Christchurch Residential Red Zone,” said the Food Resilience Network’s coordinator Dr Matt Morris. “People understand that we are on the brink of doing something truly extraordinary in this city, and the Residential Red Zone is, in many ways, the key to that.”

“We have noticed considerable energy around the idea of using the Red Zone to grow food for the city on a large scale. So we decided to test that interest out and start developing a proposal based on as much public input as possible. The people of Christchurch deserve to be heard on this,” said Dr Morris.

Ideas captured from the workshop this Sunday will form the basis of a report to CERA and help create a consensus about a best-case scenario for local food production in the Red Zone.

Dr Morris said that since the event was notified on Facebook, it has been seen by over 6000 people and been ‘shared’ over 100 times.

“We encourage everyone interested to come along to the session,” said Dr Morris. “It will run to an open format so people can call in for ten minutes or the whole four hours, depending on how much they have to say and how much time they have available,” he said.

Facilitators on the day come from a wide variety of organisations, including the Christchurch City Council, the Canterbury District Health Board, the Canterbury Community Gardens Association, Project Lyttelton, Avon-Otakaro Network, the Christchurch Food Forest Collective, Permaculture NZ, the Mahinga Kai Exemplar Project and the Canterbury Horticultural Society.

“There will be some fantastic expertise in the room. It’s going to be an amazing day,” said Dr Morris.

ENDS

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