Rooted in Resilience: How North Saanich Is Taking Control of Its Own Food Future
Most people don’t know that Vancouver Island currently has roughly a three-day supply of food on hand, with about 90% of it imported, and much of what is grown here shipped off to the mainland just for processing and storage. For a community like North Saanich, which sits on 1,625 hectares of some of the richest farmland on the Island, that disconnect between what the land can grow and what actually stays local is both a practical problem and a missed opportunity.
The Harvest Hub is a direct response to that gap. Construction broke ground in April 2026 on the Sandown Lands at Glamorgan Road, and the 1,720-square-foot shared-use facility is designed to give local farmers, producers, and food processors the infrastructure they’ve long been missing: space and equipment to store, process, and distribute food grown right here on the Saanich Peninsula. Plans include dedicated food processing space, a retail area, and room to grow. The $1.25-million project is anchored by a generous $750,000 private donation from North Saanich resident Gregory Warner, with completion targeted for late 2026.
For local farmers, the practical benefits are significant. Shipping, storage, and processing costs eat into already thin margins, and having shared infrastructure close to home changes the economics of small and medium-scale farming in real ways. But the Harvest Hub is also something bigger than a practical facility; it is a statement about what kind of community North Saanich wants to be. Building on ideas that were first explored back in 2010, it reflects a long-standing commitment to protecting the agricultural character of this place and investing in the resilience of the people who grow food here. North Saanich has the land. Now it will have the tools to make the most of it.
Sources:
https://www.douglasmagazine.com/vancouver-island-food-security-investment-harvest-hub
https://northsaanich.ca/services/harvest-hub/harvest-hub-news/
