Canada: Toronto’s booming urban farms aid food security and reduce carbon emissions
How Canada’s most populous city is fighting food insecurity and climate change at the same time
By Sebastian Leck
National Observer
July 19th 2021
Excerpt:
“Everything is very local here. We don’t go anywhere. We grow the food here, we compost food here and we sell the food here,” said Orlando López Gómez, the fast-talking and energetic co-ordinator at FoodShare Toronto who manages the farm.
When it’s operating, residents bring organic waste and receive tickets they can use to buy food at the local market. The waste becomes soil to grow food, creating a “closed loop” system where soil becomes food that becomes soil again. A bucket of food waste earns a resident $3, while a bunch of carrots sells for $1.
López Gómez has experience with agriculture in much more challenging conditions. Before emigrating to Canada in 2011, he worked in water conservation and forestry for the Nicaraguan government and with a local non-profit. Nicaragua has seen worsening droughts and unpredictable rainfall as the result of climate change, so he often travelled to rural agricultural areas to advise farmers on planting trees and reducing the use of pesticides.
He arrived in Canada without knowing any English, but quickly learned and applied his experience in Toronto. “I miss the names of all of the tropical trees in Nicaragua. You cannot find them here in Canada, so I need to adapt to everything here and start to study all of the new trees in Canada,” he said.
He found a wealthier country, but one with pockets of dire food insecurity. Black Canadians, for example, are three and a half times more likely to experience food insecurity than white Canadians. “It’s scary that in a rich city like Toronto that we have those situations, especially right now with COVID-19.”
