Gaining Funding in Canada

In the past few months I've really pushed myself to research not only how to properly grow hot & super-hot peppers, but also what it will take to take to go from growing in my home to making a Commercial Greenhouse a reality.
 
A few weeks ago I approached NOBL (Northern Business Opportunities Limited), a non-profit, government-backed organization that is intended to help small businesses & entrepreneurs in rural areas of my province (Nova Scotia) with investment loans. At the time I looking at a range of business ideas and had not narrowed down to the hot peppers.
 
Since that time, though, I certainly have and I've put together a business plan that is -nearly- complete. All that is left is the financials & financial projections (which I am hard at work factoring out).
 
So yesterday I emailed what I had to NOBL, since they offered to provide assistance with the business plan and other advice/direction if it was needed. Today one of their Business Analysts called and I spoke with her for around an hour. The long and short of it is that they cannot consider my plan without the projections (which I knew) and, even then, the chance of getting a "Aye" instead of a "Nay" is very slim she said, because I lack any collateral.
 
The land I would ideally like to have is directly across the road from where I live and it is a barren field where an open-strip coal mine once tore through our town. The difficulty there is that is still owned by the same coal company that cleared out many, many years ago -and- it is somehow zoned as "Residential" (which simply doesn't make sense to me when it is industrially owned).
 
This where I start hitting into the roadblocks - mostly in the form of Catch-22's.
 
If I simply go to this coal company as someone "off the street" with nothing to back me, aside from my business plan, I doubt I'll gain much ground. Chances are, if they're holding onto the land, then they'll likely want to bargain for it - if they'll even -consider- selling it or providing a Development Permit for it. They'll likely want to know how much I'd be looking to obtain and how much I'd be willing to pay.
 
Without financial backing all that is essentially "up in the air" because I really couldn't say. And for me to get the financing to be able to say, I'd first need collateral - aka the land.
 
So approaching either the coal company or NOBL at this point is essentially a no-go, if I wanted to be taken seriously.
 
The next potential option is another non-profit, government-backed organization called "Farm Credit Canada", which offers a large number of financing options, but the one in particular that has caught my eye is labeled as a "Start Now - Pay Later" loan. And though I have not contacted them, yet, they indicate they look for land as "security" as well. Although, as the Business Analyst at NOBL said, they may be more flexible where their primary focus -is- Agriculture... But then my credit comes into play. And it is shot, sadly.
 
So what I'm wondering is:
 
a) If anyone in Canada has any experience gaining funding for a start-up such as what I am attempting and what they did or if they can point me to financial resources that might actually be possible for me to obtain?
 
and
 
b) If I were to start an Indiegogo or Kickstarter crowdsourcing project (as I've seen a number of others here do) do you think there would potential in making it happen and would you have any suggestions on how to better spread the word?
 
I know I'm over my head in a lot of ways, but I also know I have a talent for working things out when I put myself to it. *nod*
 
:mouthonfire:
 
I've played this game before with an unfavorable outcome. My advice is to stay away from financial institutions and look at private investors that possibly have their own land to lease or rent to you. They may be able to provide the venture capital needed to get you started.

I'm on the West coast of Canada and currently have approx a thousand superhot seedlings on the go (18 varieties) and will have hopefully 4-5 thousand to distribute in the spring and grow out to maturity. I've wasted countless hours trying to get institutional and government funding.

I ended up funding my project privately and set up operation on my own land. I had wanted to lease a greenhouse space, but was able to provide the needed space myself on my own land.

I hate to be discouraging but it is very difficult to provide a solid business plan for farming that an institution will take seriously. As you said, they want collateral... plants are a live "being" and are not feasable to the institutions I looked into. Land purchases require 20% down.

I looked into kick starter programs but a person seems to need a pretty big social network to gain any feasable funding.

I would canvas private investors if you don't have the capital to get started. WAY easier to sit down with a private investor and show him your plans in Laymans terms.
 
Thanks for the response Hells Bells :)
 
Definitely not being discouraging. All you've said is pretty much the conclusion I've already reached.
 
I -do- have a Kickstarter project I started building, but I haven't the time to finish it just yet because I actually picked up a couple of new Web Development clients in the past 2 weeks, so my hands are going to be full for a while. But on the bright side, that means I'll hopefully see a nice chunk of income coming my way once these two projects are completed.
 
I really like the idea of finding private investors, and that's where all signs seem to be pointing, but being that I have zero experience with that I'm really not sure where to begin to even -find- such people. Alas, here on the east coast money isn't nearly as abundant as it is in western Canada. And even worse - I live in a county was rated by MoneySense as being one of the very worst in all of Canada. lol
 
But then, that's part of the challenge - I want to make this business happen in the hopes of doing even a small part to help revitalize our community.. rather than being all talk and tossing taxpayer money around on fancy ads that really give nothing back to the community (which sadly, happens a lot in our area).
 
p.s. That sounds like a pretty awesome setup you've built up, to have that many growing at once. :)
 
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