Why Nova Scotia?
 

There is an incredible amount of interest in urban agriculture in Nova Scotia as witness to a recent series of feature articles in the Halifax Chronicle (one with the title: “Our farmers are struggling: Can Nova Scotia’s growing appetite for local food save the farm before it is too late?”). No surprise then that these topics were also the subject of recent discussions at the 2009 Nova Scotia Food Summit, sponsored by the Friends of Agriculture in Nova Scotia, as well as the Food Security: From Feast to Famine meeting at Saint Mary’s University.

Additionally, Nova Scotia has one of the richest agricultural heritages in the New World.

• Debert, located near Truro at the head of the Bay of Fundy, has been occupied for more than 10,000 years and is one of the most significant Paleo-Indian sites in North America. Although primarily caribou and small-game hunters, evidence suggests that such ancient Clovis peoples also raised waterfowl and kept small gardens.
  
• Colonized in 1605, Port Royal on the Bay of Fundy is the earliest permanent European settlement in North America north of Florida. A grist-stone discovered nearby may be the oldest European agricultural artifact found on the continent.
  
• Rather than clearing forests like their contemporaries in colonial Virginia and Quebec, Acadians during the 17th century focused on the tidal marshes around the Bay of Fundy where they constructed elaborate networks of earthen dikes and wooden sluice gates (aboiteaux). The resulting massive drainage and reclamation systems are some of the oldest European agricultural landscapes found in North America.
  
• The Halifax Farmers’ Market was founded in 1750 and is the oldest continually operating farmers’ market on the continent.
  
• NSAC, in operation since 1905, is the agricultural or land grant college in North America that is closest to Europe, where the allotment garden movement began which would be a conceptual inspiration for community gardens found on this side of the Atlantic.