Food prices continue to rise in Canada, but not everyone in the Greater Toronto Area has access to enough land to grow their own food. Or maybe they do: these eight people in different parts of the region have created flourishing gardens in whatever spaces they have — be it on a tiny balcony, inside a condo with limited sunlight, out back with lots of space or at a community plot. 

From a retiree in the suburbs to a busy chef right downtown, they told us about the stress relief of reducing their grocery bills and ensuring a bit more food security in an era of supply chain upheavals and climate change. They also told us about the pleasures of bringing delicious things into the world, wherever they can. 

“Living in the city, you’re kind of deprived of nature. You don’t have that relationship with nature that you know a lot of people used to have.” — Mel Bronwyn

A salad grows in a condo: Mel Bronwyn

A freelance video journalist, Mel Bronwyn recently moved with her partner from Cambridge, Ont., to Toronto’s downtown core. She makes the most of the limited space in her condo by growing microgreens, herbs like basil and cilantro, radishes, spinach, sweet potatoes, cabbages and other vegetables.

“A space should be nourishing. It should feel welcoming. It should feel lively and I feel like plants do that for you. But I didn’t feel like it was affordable to just buy decorative plants. So I decided to buy a bunch of herbs and vegetables and things like that because I could eat them. It’s also just a better use of money.

Growing in this kind of space is actually pretty easy if you invest in devices. They don’t have to be extremely expensive either, right? I spent around $400 because I waited [to find] used and good plant equipment and lights. I usually go through $12 to $15 worth of soil monthly because I tend to replace soil and grow new plants often once I’m done harvesting.”

“Seeds are so inexpensive. You continually harvest so many vegetables with a $3 package. That’s pretty efficient. Also herbs are really inexpensive. Basically, I bought one basil. I propagated it and now I have like a billion things. So it just seemed like it made sense. Why would I ever buy basil again? That’s kind of how I went about it.

It’s also a lot more accessible. If you go to a grocery store and purchase this, it’s just a lot of money. My grocery bill is really low now and I’ve managed to purchase less produce. I haven’t had to pay for basil, cilantro, microgreens or things like that in a very long time.” 

“I also think it’s kind of influenced the way my partner and I eat. We eat a lot healthier for less money. 

Vegetables at the grocery store are also not as healthy too because they’re not freshly cut. You don’t know how long it’s been there. You don’t know about the pesticides, whether or not the soil was extremely nourishing. At home, I have control over all aspects of this. I also appreciate my food a lot more.”

Bronwyn has specific watering and temperature levels set for her garden. “It’s very low maintenance. I think I spend about seven to 10 minutes in the morning,” she says.

“From a nutritional perspective, I really care about my mental health and physical health. And they very much relate to each other. If it’s easy to be healthy from my home then I’m likely to be healthy. When I have my microgreens available, I have ways of making a salad extremely healthy. I have ways of just sprinkling fresh vegetables that have been freshly cut.”

“If I had advice for people who want to do something like this and they’re afraid to start, I’d say always start,” Bronwyn says. “I always tell people to start with herbs. They’re very easy to grow. They multiply a lot. You can propagate them.”

“I also know that when I am depressed, for example, or if I’m not really taking care of myself, it will visually show in my garden. When you’re not taking care of yourself, you’re not necessarily taking care of your garden either. So it’s a very good way of gauging. Like, wow, I really haven’t watered this in several days, now. They’re starting to get a little wilted. Then you have a sense of, ‘hey, where are you at?’

And then you start taking care of them and you start taking care of yourself. It’s a very beautiful relationship.”  

“Growing up, I watched my dad gardening and growing food. He once said, ‘when you grow food and garden, it’s such a good thing. It’s good for the earth and then in return, it’s good for you. You nurse the land and the land nourishes you back.’” — Sana Ahmed

Two generations of growers : Munawar and Sana Ahmed

Munawar Ahmed and his daughter, Sana, use most of Munawar’s backyard in Brampton, Ont., to grow potatoes, okra and other vegetables. 

Munawar: “My father was in agriculture and research. He would experiment with food and gardening for his job back home in Pakistan. Even at home, he and my mother would garden. I was young at the time. I would watch what they were doing.

At the beginning of my gardening journey, I was making mistakes [like overwatering and underwatering plants]. Eventually, I started to get the hang of it.

When I came to Canada though, I couldn’t garden right away. I had nothing. No house. Nothing. I was living with somebody else, renting a place. But my desire to garden was still there. 

I had lots of books on gardening. When I bought [another] house before this one, I tried to make a garden. But because of my profession as a welder, I spent more time at work and less time gardening, in comparison to now. Again, when I got to this country I had nothing. I had to work hard, and then when I got married and had children I had to work even more hard.

Now that I’m retired and at this house, I’m able to garden a lot more. It keeps me busy and gives me peace of mind. And I’m able to grow a lot of food, like zucchinis and cucumbers. Everything here is built by me.”

Munawar Ahmed repurposes used bins and buckets to grow herbs like basil.

Munawar waters his cucumber plants, which are supported by a wall that he built from scratch. The wall helps keep the plants upright.

Munawar also has his own compost bin, where he puts loose leaves that fell from his vegetables. 

Sana: “I went back to school for my environmental studies. I started learning more about the importance of growing local food. I got really interested in food systems and all that. 

We’re so disconnected from the environment, especially in urban settings. By having this space to grow the food you can understand these food systems. 

And with climate change, it’s especially important to grow food locally … with the way things are going, these systems are uncertain. We’re seeing food prices going up. So I think knowing how to grow your own food helps you take back that food sovereignty.

Zucchini is one of Munawar’s favourite vegetables. “Yesterday we had about five zucchinis and Sana said ‘we’re going to make toriya, a zucchini curry with them.’ So we did,” he says.

Sana: “So I told my dad that I want to start helping out. I want to say the last four or five years, I started helping him and he showed me how you plant stuff and how you grow them. And since then we would have ideas, just dreaming of big things. We talk about greenhouses all the time for instance. 

It’s been a good way to bond and learn. It’s nice that we have that similar interest.” 

“Not only is access to land difficult in the city, but access to the right space because you can have land but just not have sunlight. We’re privileged enough to have a slice of space where we can grow food that we can easily access.” — Mary Vo

An influencer out front: Mary Vo

With nearly 30,000 followers on Instagram, Mary Vo is a gardening influencer who grows tomatoes, peppers, kale and much more in her front yard in Toronto’s St. Clair West neighbourhood.

“I’ve always kind of dabbled in gardening but never really had a focus because I was busy with other stuff. It really didn’t happen until the COVID-19 pandemic hit and the big oak tree in our front yard fell during a storm. 

It kind of coincided. I started more for mental health and mindfulness and it just kind of progressed from there. I started documenting my journey on Instagram and then everyone became interested. There was such a want from people to learn.”

Since the beginning of the pandemic, Vo has documented her garden journey on her Instagram account, where she posts gardening tips. She has nearly 30,000 followers.

“So I started posting what I did, and some gardening tips to help people because I believe that everyone should have the ability to learn. It was kind of a way to be involved in a community of like-minded people.

I learned a bit of gardening from watching my dad garden when I was growing up. So I kind of had a little background. I also borrowed a lot of different books and just read a lot of different material. I was also watching some other Instagram accounts and on Facebook as well. There’s a garden community within the neighborhood: depending on which area you live in, you can kind of search for gardeners within that community which is really great, because there are a lot of plant swaps and seed exchanges that happen. 

Because my space is small I try to take advantage of growing vertically and using different-sized plants — like dwarf tomatoes — and just growing on the veranda balcony.”

Having a garden in the front yard is  “a great way to meet the neighbours,” Vo says. “They’re interested in what’s happening.”

Vo tends to her radish sprouts.

“I’d say be more prepared for what may come. Sometimes I don’t do certain gardening tasks because I think ‘Oh yes, it’s fine, it looks okay.’ The next day the plant is like flopped over because there was a big gust of wind and my tomato snapped in two.”

“I’ve been to the grocery store lately, and it’s almost horrific in terms of the prices. I was shocked because I’m so used to shopping in my garden. It’s concerning what the cost of, like, a head of lettuce is nowadays.

I do think gardening is this sort of an investment upfront. You’re investing in, you know, your soil, your potting bags, your containers. But yeah, the investment pays over time. 

My husband does some of the labour. And my kids help up with the harvesting. They’ll tend to specific containers that are theirs, and help take out what they want to grow. Every year, we go through these seed catalogues and they’ll point to something that they like and want to try. I want them to feel a part of this. I want them to experience the joy of learning and carry that on later.” 

“One of the bright sides of always living in relatively small spaces is that I’ve always had a small space for gardening. I’m not used to having a backyard and having all this space. So it’s kind of growing what you know.” — Sam Pramanik

Berries on the balcony: Sam Pramanik

Having lived in multiple homes and apartments in Toronto, Sam Pramanik knows what it’s like to garden in small spaces. She currently resides in the Dufferin Grove neighbourhood with her partner. 

“I grew up watching my parents garden a lot, especially my mom. As a kid, I didn’t really care. But I think always being surrounded by it subconsciously made an impact on me.  

When I moved back to Toronto after school, my first apartment had this tiny little balcony. I thought I might try growing some herbs because I cook a lot. So I just grew really basic stuff like basil and cilantro. I was pretty shocked at how much I enjoyed it.”

Pramanik’s strawberries showed up in mid-July.

“It was low maintenance. It was like literally two bins. I’d just water every day but it was so satisfying to see them grow and to be able to actually cook with them and eat them. 

Now I’m here. I have quite a few different plants in a small space but it’s really fun. It feels very nourishing for the soul to be able to come out and just clip your plants, your vegetables. It makes me feel connected with the physical earth — obviously, I’m not planting in the ground, but there’s something very nourishing. Just watching something grow simply by watering it and giving it light. I think it’s really cool. I’m also super hands-on so anything crafty or like gardening where I can shut my brain off and just do manual labour is something I really enjoy. So this is very conducive to that.”

“When you’re not growing in the ground, you’re kind of limited to what you can grow. So there’s that. I also chose the things that I knew I would want to eat. That’s why I have a bunch of herbs because I’ll use those every day. Tomatoes are my favourite vegetable and they’re really easy to grow in these small pots. And then my partner and I both really love spicy food, so we grow peppers.” 

“To anyone who has a small space and wants to start growing their own food, I would say, just pick one or two things to start with. Experiment and figure out what you can do.”

“It’s nice to have someone else to appreciate it with you and just be able to help and actually care about it.” — Steve Perrotta

Friends growing food: Steve Perrotta and Marleigh Fox

Marleigh Fox and Steve Perrotta have been friends for several years but Marleigh just moved into the house Steve has rented in the Dovercourt Village neighbourhood for five years. This is their first time gardening together.

Perrotta: “I don’t know how I got into gardening, really. It was probably a combination of boredom and seeing my family do it. My nonna grew tomatoes and we’d make tomato sauce every September. The first summer I moved here it got me thinking, ‘why don’t I try that in our big backyard? We have the space.’ Now I’ve been gardening for five years.”

Perrotta: “I would recommend looking up stuff on YouTube. The info’s out there. Learn from the pros. I’m not really a pro yet but I try to learn from the pros.”

Fox: “I moved in five months ago and joined that journey. It’s impossible to find this kind of space in the city, if you’re a renter at least.

I’m a first-time gardener so I started with herbs. I feel like most people who garden start out with chives and basil. I was also exposed to my dad who has a really green thumb. He grows squash and really exotic plants that I would never think of, like pineapple. I also feel like during the pandemic everyone’s plant obsession kind of exploded.”

Fox: “If there’s anything I’ve learned it’s how to water the plants. So water more at the very beginning, when they’re seedlings. I feel like that was our first mistake. We weren’t watering as often as we should have.”

Fox tends to kale in her backyard.

Perrotta: “And every summer I have like a lull where I just forget about the garden or my mind just doesn’t compute and I forget to water it. You also need to upkeep it because it’s more than just watering. You need to make sure it’s not super overgrown. You have to have something to hold the plants up properly. So it’s a lot of work if you want to get it to flourish.” 

The two also plant herbs in pots on their stairwell.

Fox: “Sometimes we’ll be working and we’re like ‘Do you want to go outside and see the garden?’ Just as a work break sometimes. It’s cute. When we have our off weeks, we kind of like, pick up for each other. If I’m away for a weekend, Steve will water and if Steve’s away for a weekend, I’ll water. I feel like it’s easier because we have two of us.”

“I’m so thankful for Scadding Court. They’re the best for providing these spaces.” — Su Jin Won

A chef in the community: Su Jin Won

Su Jin Won is the co-founder and chef behind SuLee, a Korean restaurant and company known for its customizable kimchi and homestyle comfort food in Toronto. The restaurant is at Dundas Street West and Bathurst Street, steps away from Won’s community plot garden at the Scadding Court Community Centre.

“I decided to try out gardening here for the first time. You just buy the $10 membership here, and you can use all the facilities — everything — to garden. You only pay $1.50 for seedlings.”

Scadding Court Community Centre in downtown Toronto offers an urban agriculture program where members like Su Jin Won can rent an eight foot by six foot plot for a seasonal fee.

The centre encourages members to grow a row of produce to donate to a local food bank.

“At first, I asked myself ‘What did I do?’ But it changed my life, I’ve got to tell you. It changed my life in every way. I was stressed before but gardening takes all the stress out. It’s one of the best choices I’ve ever made. You don’t think of anything but the plants. I never knew I could accomplish something like this, especially with how busy I am at the restaurant. But it’s a strategy. You need to figure out when to water the plants, how much you should water them, how to support your plants with sticks or wood and so on.”

Won did not expect her plants, like this cucumber vine, to flourish as well as they did.

With the help of a friend, Won made a sign asking passers-by not to take her crops.

“Every day is different. For example, one cucumber will be super small but then all of a sudden tomorrow you come back to the garden and it’s more than twice the size. I like to make pickled cucumbers with them, as well as pickled zucchini and pickled kale with my other crops. I’ll also try to use leek and chives for garnishing customers’ food.”

Pickles made from vegetables Won grew in her garden plot.

My mom [who died in 2018] loved plants. She had so many plants at home. I had always seen her take care of them. And then when I was young, I’d ask, ‘Why do you bother?’ But then she’d say ‘I just wanted to live in a place that has gardening’ and now I’m feeling the same. I just never knew. I never knew I would follow that step, but it just happened naturally. 

And now I talk to my mom here every day. I’m like, ‘Oh my god, butterflies. That’s my mom. My mom’s here.’

Updated on Aug. 27, 2022, at 10:10 a.m. ET: This story has been updated to correct the name of Su Jin Won, who was earlier misidentified as Su Jin Lee.

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

This photo essay is part of The Narwhal’s BIPOC Photojournalism Fellowship, operated in partnership with Room Up Front and made possible by The Reader’s Digest Foundation and the generosity of The Narwhal’s readers.

Canada brandishes its agricultural sector as an economic “powerhouse” that’s responsible for producing some of the world’s highest quality foods.

In 2019, the federal government unveiled the first-ever Food Policy of Canada, which is meant, in part, to ensure everyone across the country has access to “a sufficient amount of safe, nutritious and culturally diverse food.”

Yet the food that is harvested in Canada often does not end up on the plates of racialized and marginalized communities. Individuals from the Black, Indigenous and people of colour (BIPOC) community represent the most food-insecure people in Canada.

According to research from PROOF Food Insecurity Policy Research, an initiative of the University of Toronto in partnership with other universities, national food insecurity — the inability to access food due to financial constraints — is predominantly experienced by Black and Indigenous communities.

A 2020 PROOF analysis of Stats Canada data from 2017 and 2018 found that 28.2 per cent of Indigenous households and 28.9 per cent of Black households identify as being food-insecure, representing the highest rates in the country.

Black-centred urban farms in Toronto — one of the world’s most diverse cities, and Canada’s largest metropolitan city — recognize this issue and see first-hand how it impacts their own community.

Toronto’s primarily Black neighbourhoods — such as Downsview-Roding CFB, Weston and Glenfield Jane Heights — are some of the poorest in the city. In 2014, the city identified these neighbourhoods — along with 28 others — as Neighbourhood Improvement Areas. Today, these neighbourhoods have been hit the hardest with COVID-19 cases.

But even as an urgent need to improve these areas is top-of-mind for Toronto decision-makers, Black urban farmers say they still face significant uphill battles when it comes to bringing healthy, local produce to Black urban communities.

“Your food is your medicine and your lifestyle is your therapy,” Jacqueline Dwyer, co-founder of the Toronto Black Farmers and Food Growers’ Collective, tells The Narwhal. “I don’t see our food doing that. [Black people] are eating the worst kind of food now.”

Dwyer says there’s been a concerted effort from Black farmers in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) to bring more produce to the communities that need it most.

“We’re not here to sell to sexy white markets. We’re here to serve our community, to feed those who don’t have the money to buy food and access food banks regularly.”

Black urban farmers say they are experiencing difficulty serving Toronto’s Neighbourhood Improvement Areas with high Black populations, mostly due to a lack of access to arable land. Map: Alicia Carvalho / The Narwhal

The city recognizes this issue too, and initiated the Toronto Strong Neighbourhoods Strategy 2020 to provide funding to the neighbourhood improvement areas and establish action plans to improve their wellbeing. Providing “free land, soil, mulch, etc. for community gardens and urban farming,” was listed as a prioritized action to promote food security for the improvement ares.

Yet, despite these ongoing initiatives, Black farmers in the city say not enough is being done to connect food-growers with useable land. Accessing and retaining arable land — that is both affordable and offers proper infrastructure — continues to be a struggle for these marginalized farmers.

The following photos document the experience of three Black-led farms, Sundance Harvest, the Toronto Black Farmers and Food Growers’ Collective and Lucky Bug Farm, which are committed to resolving food insecurity within their communities but are struggling to access and retain the necessary land. Two of the farms are based in the GTA and one is based in Wellington County. Each of them, while different, have unique experiences with land accessibility and retention.

Sundance Harvest

Twenty-four-year-old Cheyenne Sundance, founder of Sundance Harvest, at her farm in June.

Sundance Harvest is a for-profit farm, founded and run by 24-year-old Cheyenne Sundance. The farm is located at Downsview Park, an urban federally and provincially run greenspace about a twelve-minute drive from the intersection of Jane and Finch that once served as a Canadian Forces Base.

Sundance became interested in farming after she left the suburb where she grew up and began travelling. At 18-years-old, Sundance says her visit to a farm in Viñales, Cuba, piqued her interest. She admired the way the farm served its community.

After her travels, Sundance made her way back to the GTA, intent on finding a job within the agriculture industry. But she says she couldn’t find a farm that paid their workers fairly. Nor could she find a farm that would advocate for food justice.

“That’s organic farming [in Canada]: white men saying ‘you can live in a tent, work 40 hours a week and we’ll give you lentil soup and rye bread,’” she says.

“I didn’t want that life.” 

And so, Sundance started her own farm with the eponymous name, using her life savings and a $5,000 grant from a non-profit group. 

“I wanted to start a farm because I wanted to see a farm like this,” she says. 

By “this,” Sundance means a farm that is Black-led and focuses on food justice by serving marginalized folks with their produce and mentorship programs, all while paying workers a liveable wage. 

At the entrance to one of Sundance Harvest’s greenhouses, Sundance preps produce to sell at a local market on the afternoon of June 16, 2021. “I don’t get enough credit and I’m OK with that,” Sundance tells The Narwhal. “I’m doing some pretty cool stuff.”

Twenty-one-year-old Sundance employee Kiyana tends to the garlic and onion at Downsview Park. She says she first learned about farming through Sundance Harvest’s mentorship program, Growing In The Margins. “I grew up in the city. I’m not really exposed to this kind of stuff,” she says. “I’m from the Dovercourt-Junction area where we don’t have a farm or garden space. They’re either taken down because of condos or other development.”

As a young, Black woman who came from a lower-income family, Sundance knew creating a farm wouldn’t be easy, especially when it came to finding land. But she was willing to improvise.

In 2019, when she noticed an empty greenhouse at Downsview Park, Sundance approached the people on site but couldn’t find an answer on who to talk to about renting space to start her own farm. With a little internet sleuthing, Sundance found out that Canada Lands Company, a federal Crown corporation that manages land and develops former Government of Canada properties, was leasing the space and immediately emailed them to inquire about rent.

“I don’t like waiting, and I’m not patient. So I just did it,” she says. “Everyone says farming requires patience. It should but — at the same time — if you want to make fast decisions and grow fast, impatience is nice.” 

Sundance’s quick request met with a favourable response. She heard back that, to start, she could rent half a greenhouse from Canada Lands Company. Around a year later, in September 2020, she expanded to one full greenhouse. By December that year, she expanded to two greenhouses and a one-third acre parcel of land. Sundance says she was able to make profit within the first year of farming. She sells more than 100 pounds of tomatoes — one of her farm’s specialties — every week. And her success has gone beyond just what she’s grown in the dirt. Over the last year Sundance has garnered media attention across Canada for her work in food insecurity, food justice and food sovereignty. Her Instagram has also increased by tenfold, with nearly 32,000 followers to date.

At one of her greenhouses, Sundance checks her tomatoes to see how much she can start to sell for the week. Taken on June 7, 2021.

Sundance checks the quality of her heirloom tomatoes before packing them up for sale at market.

When asked about her favourite recipe to make with her harvest, Sundance’s answer comes easy: “Bruschetta,” she says. “I love to use my tomatoes and other veggies.”

Media coverage of Sundance Harvest’s success resulted in a new realm of possibilities for Sundance. She says as her farm’s popularity grew, real estate developers began reaching out to offer their undeveloped land for farm space — for free.

“[They’re] reaching out to me to start farms where a condo would be. I would have the land for five years before they would start building. I was offered an acre with no rent because they wanted to use the Sundance branding. If I was someone who had no following, they wouldn’t do that.” 

Sundance tends to peppers at Downsview Park. She says she checks the plants and swaps out peppers that are in bad shape with beans.

What’s a sign of good soil? “Worms,” Sundance says. “They also improve the quality of the soil, which ends up improving the plant.”

Sundance says she still faces barriers when working on site at Downsview Park, in spite of her success and being established for nearly two years. 

“The amount of sexism and racism I experience here from the public is crazy,” she says. 

Sundance and her staff — particularly the staff who are young women of colour — have experienced white men harassing them, following them to the greenhouses, or standing and staring at them for long periods of time.

A bright orange fence, set up on Sundance Harvest’s plot to deter theft and public trespassing. Sundance says she’s considering planting sunflowers to create a barrier in the future.

“They’d keep asking: ‘Why aren’t you talking to me? Why aren’t you showing me this? What are you doing with the garlic?’” she recalls. “I pay a lease here. I’m not paid to teach you. I have to work to make money.”

Sundance eventually introduced walkie talkies for staff and instituted new rules about the company having at least two people on site to ensure employee safety.

“And if that doesn’t work, I always have a harvest knife on me in case,” she says.

Sometimes, Sundance says, the sexism takes a more obvious form.

“My friend Evan was doing the drip tape irrigation the other day. I was very clearly telling him what to do. This man comes up, steps in front of me and starts talking to Evan, offering his company’s packing and delivery services to the farm.”

Theft has also occurred at the site, with nearly 100 garlic pods being stolen in July. Sundance says she is currently trying to build more fences and tape, and move certain plants to the greenhouse as methods to prevent further theft.

Experiences like these are also why Sundance wants to mentor young marginalized folks through her 12-week program, Growing In The Margins. This includes people who identify as low-income, Black, Indigenous, a Person of Colour, LGBTQ2S or a person with a disability. The mentorship stream of this program aims to educate those who want to start their own full-time career in urban farming.

Lucky Bug Farms

Lucky Bug Farm was established in 2020, thanks to the help from Sundance Harvest’s mentorship program. Founder and owner Aliyah Fraser originally had an urban planning career, working at a law firm and with various levels of government. She says the lack of focus on sustainability and marginalized communities that she witnessed during her career made her want to switch professions. 

“[I realized that] at the end of the day, the people who have the power to make changes in our communities are not interested in making those changes. They’re interested in profits,” she says. “It’s hard for me to feel engaged in it.”

Yet she still wanted to put the knowledge and skills she had gained to good use.

“I remember thinking: what do I love? One of them is food and the other is the environment. Farming kind of sits at that intersection,” Fraser says.

“At the same time, I wanted to do something that involved working outside, doing things that were kind of different every day. And something about working with the land called me.”

Fraser carries a bucket of soil to start planting tomatoes and lettuce at her farm on June 9, 2021.

She says that when she happened upon Sundance’s work around May 2020, “it felt like serendipity.”

“I was trying to find someone who was kind of doing what I was thinking in my head, trying to find a precedent … [of] Black-owned urban farms in Canada,” Fraser says.

Sundance and Fraser had a one-hour consultation that summer. It was during that time when Sundance encouraged Fraser to apply for Growing In The Margins. Fraser says the mentorship program solidified her decision to switch to farming as a full-time career.

“It was like unlocking a different level of my brain,” she says about the program. “The space that Cheyenne created was so informative. It’s a space full of hope and imagining possibilities for how things could be different.”

In the 30°C heat, Fraser uses a “gridder” tool to smooth the soil and even up the space when planting her tomatoes.

How did the name Lucky Bug Farm come to be? “That’s a good question!” Fraser says. “My dad’s nickname for me — ever since I was born — has been ladybug. And my first tattoo on my body ever was ladybug. And so I thought, let’s continue that trend!”

Fraser plants each crop by hand at her farm. Pictured here is Fraser planting a tomato, with a lettuce plant in the foreground. “I don’t want to do traditional farming,” says Fraser, who is committed to no-till farming. “I don’t use chemical fertilizers. My fertilizers are naturally derived. But I love it. I love the environmental and ecological benefits of it.”

As a first-time farmer, Fraser says it’s the “lack of access to land that is [her] own” that is impacting her right now. “I think that speaks historically to the ways that Black people have been shutout [from] ownership in this country.” 

Fraser, who’s been living in the Kitchener-Waterloo region since attending University of Waterloo, was ideally hoping to find arable land with the right infrastructure near her. Instead — with the help of Sundance — she was able to find land in Wellington County, near Erin, Ontario. She says the commute is about 45 minutes by car from her place. 

Fraser is renting a quarter of an acre of land at Zocalo Organics, a farm that runs an incubator that prioritizes land accessibility for BIPOC farmers. 

“It’s like, pretty small in farming terms. But it’s also over 11,000 square feet,” Fraser says. “Starting with a quarter of an acre seems manageable.”

“I think as a Black woman, society often puts us in the background. That wasn’t the place that I wanted to be in. I wanted to put my stamp on things, my name on things and get the recognition for the work that I do. Farming has really allowed me to get that.” Aliyah Fraser Lucky Bug Farm

Fraser walks across the farming plots to collect more soil for planting.

Fraser counts out seedlings in advance of a sale in Kitchener-Waterloo. “It’s a good way to make some extra cash,” she says.

Still, Fraser says it shouldn’t be this difficult for people of colour to find land like this. She wants all levels of government to step up and “make some decisions about the type of agriculture they’d like to see.” 

“In my opinion that should look diverse and inclusive, not only for Black people, but for Indigenous people and other people of colour,” she says. 

The Toronto Black Farmers and Food Growers’ Collective

The Toronto Black Farmers and Food Growers’ Collective was established in 2013, also at Downsview Park. At the time, it was one of the first Black-led park farms in Canada. 

“We set up about a 2.5-acre farm,” Dwyer says. “[Eventually], people figured out what we were doing. People who would use the park on a regular basis would protect the farm when we weren’t there.”

The Collective had their last harvest at that 2.5-acre space in 2015.

“We were told by Downsview Park that we couldn’t go back over there in 2016. At the time, they started putting in the infrastructure to build that community of condominium townhouses over there,” Dwyer says. 

Dwyer says she and her partner, Noel Livingston, didn’t object at the time, as they were still new to the farming community in Toronto. Eventually they partnered with Fresh City Farms, which was established in 2011, and were relocated to the land that they are at today. 

“We Black folks always have to be fighting for our own liberties, our own justice, accountability and access. I don’t know why that is but that’s always the case here,” says Jacqueline Dwyer, co-founder of the Toronto Black Farmers and Food Growers Collective.

Dwyer checks in on her seedlings and plants at the collective’s greenhouse at Downsview Park, after hail and snow briefly hit the GTA that morning. “We were supposed to plant these earlier, but we knew the weather was going to be bad. So Noel and I moved them all here last night,” she says. “It’s so obvious how climate change is changing our harvest season. Everything is delayed.”

Dwyer says Fresh City Farms recently signed a long-term lease with the Canada Lands Company, where they will receive an 11-acre plot at the south east area of Downsview Park for up to 20 years. According to their website, Fresh City Farms is currently looking for partnerships, as they say they will be using 1.5 acres of the land, while the rest will be shared by partners. 

They estimate that the monthly operating costs per half-acre to be between $750 to $1,100, which Dwyer says is unaffordable for the Black community and other marginalized groups.

“…We don’t have money,” Dwyer says. 

In May 2021 Fresh City Farms commented on the matter in an Instagram post after someone voiced a similar concern on not bringing the collective with them to their future location, as well as their steep operating costs. Fresh City’s reasoning for the $750 to $1,100 operating costs was not to profit off the land. They say that the costs — which include rent, property taxes, insurance, electricity, water, repairs, washroom cleaning and garbage removal — have continued to be a “great challenge” at their site, as the costs are not paid by their landlord, Canada Lands Company. As a result, the operating costs will be split by their prospective partners. 

“[However] we will do everything within our power to ensure that cost is not a barrier to accessing the land, including finding donors, supporting partner grant applications and helping to coordinate a fundraiser,” they wrote. 

“It’s very tragic to see,” Dwyer says. “The people who work [at Downsview] predominantly are not from these neighbourhoods. They live in a 905 region or they drive into Toronto. So all this money that has been given to empower a neighbourhood or a community of neighbourhoods is really not doing that.”

Part of the collective’s plot at Downsview Park. The collective harvests a range of crops that includes callaloo, basil, butter lettuce, onions, okra and peppers.

With a reduced amount of arable land that includes proper infrastructure and more people to feed, Dwyer and Livingston say it has been impossible to find ideal land for farming in Toronto.

“We are left out of getting adequate resources to have a good operating team of people to do this work,” Dwyer says. “We’re locked out of infrastructure money, so we can’t put down our greenhouse and create our own space for our food hub.”

As a result they have created a partnership at Country Heritage Park in Milton, where they have access to two acres of land. The private land is about an hour-long commute by car from Downsview Park. 

TBFC founders Noel Livingston (left) and Jacqueline Dwyer (right) start planting their callaloo at their Milton location. Dwyer says the farm is trying to figure out a way to fund for a shuttle to make it more accessible for farmers to harvest land at this location. “It’s also funny how so many people are offering us land because of our work, but none of them are located in Toronto,” she said. “We’ve gotten offers from people all the way in Barrie.”

A close up shot of the tools required to set up plots and plant callaloo. Callaloo is a vegetable that’s popular in Caribbean cuisines.

“They were kind enough to give us this land,” Dwyer says in regards to the members of Country Heritage Park. “I see the people here actually live like a community. Here, they support each other. They’re still some good people left. When we come together, we can solve our issues.” 

For Dwyer and Livingston, this partnership has been tension-free. Here, they are able to do most of their harvesting, as well as provide and lease plots to community members and organizations who want to harvest their own crops. 

Dwyer also wants more to be done in the agricultural system in Canada, especially considering the history.

“[Colonizers] didn’t bring slaves here to pay them a fair wage. This agricultural system was built off the back of slaves and I am here unequivocally to tell them that I want reparation,” she says. “I want reparations for my daughter, myself, my mother, my grandmother, my great grandmother and my great-great grandmother. Genocide has been happening ever since you met us. And now we’re saying enough is enough.” 

“We need to now sit in communities and develop our own plan where we can actually share resources,” she says. “We need more feeding programs. We need to see some of our parks — that have good land — be rezoned to put our urban farms and help feed our number of communities.” 

Dwyer and Livingston sell their produce and hand-made African baskets at the Afro-Caribbean Farmers’ Market in Little Jamaica, Toronto. Little Jamaica is a neighbourhood in Toronto that has one of the largest amounts of Black-owned businesses in Canada. It was severely impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. “It’s a good day to feed our community and bring the community back together,” Dwyer says.

Callaloo was sold out within minutes at the market.

Noel Livingston educates the market-goers on food insecurity within the Black community in Toronto.

Livingston and Dwyer are commemorated for their work in feeding their community by Faisal Hassan, MPP of York, South-Weston.

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