From a vacant lot to a community hub
Community farms needed as land is at a premium, food insecurity is high
Tidy rows of raised planter beds, freshly planted trees, picnic benches and a pizza oven all surrounded by a white fence might look out of place in an industrial parking lot near St. Clair Avenue E. and Danforth Road, but it’s actually an urban farm set up to help increase access to healthy food and community green space.
Scarborough Junction Community Farm will participate in Toronto’s Urban Agriculture Week, taking place from Sept. 11 to 19, celebrating locally grown food and urban gardening. Events held across the city will provide opportunities to learn more about how growing food can help ensure fresh, local produce is accessible to everyone, make the city greener and build stronger communities. Its newest event, Veggie Derby, encourages growers to donate fresh produce at sites across the city. “It’s an opportunity to hear some of the stories and get an understanding of the full range of what growing food in the city does,” said Rhonda TeitelPayne, co-coordinator of Toronto Urban Growers, which is running Toronto Urban Agriculture Week.
Events like this are important in Toronto where land is at a premium and food insecurity is high, said Suman Roy, founder of Feed Scarborough, which operates Scarborough Junction Farm, as well as a mobile farmers market, drop-in and mobile meal programs, a training centre and four food banks — all in an area where COVID-19 has hit hard. “We have a lot of industrial land in Scarborough just sitting idle and not being used properly, and a tremendous number of new immigrants that call our community home. For many, growing food is part of their culture, but many are living in apartment buildings where they can’t really grow anything,” said Roy.
A local developer, Republic Developments, lent the organization the unused land, until a proposed development known as Scarborough Junction begins in a few years. Volunteers began transforming the derelict lot into an urban farm in June, building raised beds and choosing food based on residents’ preferences.
“COVID really escalated the need for projects such as the farm and we need to ask how we can create more spaces like this.” SUMAN ROY
FOUNDER OF FEED SCARBOROUGH
“It was important to get enough community consultation in place to decide the crops … We are learning from the cultures that live in Scarborough,” said Roy, who was excited to install a wood-burning oven at the farm that they use to make pizza using produce they’ve grown there.
Feed Scarborough started out in 2018 handing out holiday hampers each December but, when COVID hit and the local food bank closed its doors, they saw the need quickly increase, so they started delivering food to residents. “When we started in March 2020, it was just three or four neighbours who met at a Legion, emptied our wallets on the table and said, ‘Hey, people are hungry, the food bank closed, let’s go buy some food and give it to people,’” Roy said.
Today they serve over 1,000 households through their four food banks — and the urban farm provides a portion of the fresh produce for the food banks, meal programs and farmers market.
At urban farms like Scarborough Junction, volunteers work together and use the produce grown for a bigger cause.
“Food relief programs such as the drop-in meals and food banks are Band-Aid solutions. It’s all about the training and learning,” said Roy, who notes that volunteers tend to help out across many of the programs — from being at the farm on the weekend to working at the food bank during the week. The farm also provides a space to educate about issues such as food waste. A new partnership with FoodShare Toronto is teaching people about composting, and the hope is to develop a compost exchange program where people can bring food waste to the farm in exchange for compost that is ready to use.
“COVID really escalated the need for projects such as the farm and we need to ask how we can create more spaces like this,” said Roy. “This is how we envisioned it and we’re so glad to see that the community is embracing it as one of their own spaces.”