“A sustainable and just food system for Canada as proposed by the National Farmers Union will mitigate and prevent multiple cascading crises and provide the foundation of a good life.” This article is a great read to understand how Canada needs to change to adapt to the vulnerabilities of the current food system based off… Read More
Over the past months, the COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated that Canada’s patchwork approach to school nutrition programs is inadequate to support children’s health, nutrition, and academic success. Food security, already a pressing issue across Canada, has now been made even more urgent during the COVID-19 pandemic as low-income people are at higher risk of contracting COVID-19,… Read More
Over the past several months, the COVID-19 pandemic has amplified long-standing vulnerabilities within Canada’s food system. News reports have highlighted, for example, grocery stores’ struggles to keep certain items stocked, livestock herds being culled in huge numbers due to bottlenecks at meat processing plants, and produce sitting wasting in farmers’ fields due to restaurant closures… Read More
This is a series of photos taken by Angela Gong at Fresh City Farms’ Downsview Park location. The photos highlight various components of the urban farming experience, as well as the changes that occurred with physical distancing measures and pandemic-related closures. Click here to read more about Angela’s experience farming with her family. April 22, 2017. A bean seedling in… Read More
A third migrant worker’s death in Ontario only highlights long-standing injustices in the agricultural programs that bring these workers to Canada ‘Migrant Workers’ may be a term that hardly rings a bell for many Canadians when they think about the local food system. This has changed recently though given that they are now in the spotlight as, for example, migrant workers were reported as representing 80 out of 404 new COVID-19 cases in Ontario on the first… Read More
This article coming from Foodfirst.org highlights the various issues faced by both migrant food workers as well as local food workers. It highlights key points of interest such as: Free market Food Systems and Exploited Labor. Corporations, Worker Vulnerability, and Forced Labor Migration. Organized labor, Solidarity, and Resilience. All of which play an important… Read More
This past March marked the start of my family’s fourth growing season as Member Farmers at Fresh City Farms. After planning through the winter months, it was finally time to plant our seedlings in the Downsview Park greenhouse, and prepare our 2000 square feet of land for another summer of farming. As the Government of Ontario began… Read More
Spring seedlings sprout up in greenhouse on a small-scale ecological vegetable farm in Prince Edward County. This farm typically sells its produce in Toronto, including through farmers markets, which were delayed in opening due to COVID-19 restrictions A barn at a small-scale livestock farm near London, Ontario houses cows, pigs, and chickens. Mixed farms… Read More
From being labelled ‘heroes’ and ‘essential workers’ to losing pay premiums in the midst of a crisis: What happens to frontline food workers when the pandemic is over? I recently came across an article published in The Atlantic which has been on my mind. It voices the frustration of a frontline grocery store worker who is tired of being called a ‘hero’. The article’s title, Calling Me a Hero Only Makes You Feel Better, strongly suggests that frontline workers, even as they are hailed as heroes, struggle with the challenge of making… Read More
In June 2020, the Growing Stronger project, run out of the University of Guelph’s Arrell Food Institute, hosted a webinar to discuss how COVID-19 has exacerbated food insecurity in Canada and worldwide. They asked: What new issues are we facing? How did we get here in the first place? What actions are required to mitigate these problems? … Read More