Nathan Nun

We tend not to think of our consumption being conditioned by domination, but decisions of what kinds of foods to consume are for many not simply choices made in an environment of freedom. Working times, costs of food, available space, location of food sources, and all kinds of knowledge from food preparation to poisonous industrial practices condition whether one is able to acquire healthy and pleasing foods. Changing attitudes about food are difficult when people are besieged by the psychological treachery of advertising and the physiological affects of engineered food products themselves. The poisonous practices of the food system are not easy to individually escape, by buying organic at your local market for instance, when access is conditioned by wealth. Even access to processed and less than desirable produce is an issue for poor North Americans – who are now using food banks and food stamps at record-breaking proportions. On the other end, the destructive practices of large-scale corporate food production, from chemicals fertilizers, to terminator seeds, to land destruction, cannot be avoided.

As it becomes more obvious that our current models of food production and consumption are already failing many populations and are ultimately unsustainable, the question arises as to which alternatives to large industrial farming and corporate dominated food system are viable. A promising alternative model is community gardening: grassroots efforts to grow food in urban green spaces, managed by community participants. One might assume that these local operations would be ineffectual and inefficient in providing urban populations with food, but participation in existing gardens and research about urban gardening is showing not only that they can be economically efficient and environmentally practical, but that they also provide numerous individual and community benefits to health and well-being. They foster relationships with nature and community, and provide a space, which gratifies aesthetic needs and offers a different model of work. Community gardens may have a role to play in larger social transformation if we pay attention to their potential, especially when they are self-consciously made a food sovereignty project.

Researchers at the C.S. Mott Group for Sustainable Food Systems at Michigan State researched the potential of urban home and community gardens in Detroit with some surprising results: with extended infrastructure such as greenhouses and adequate storage facilities, community agriculture has the potential to provide 76% of all vegetables and 42% of all fruits needed by the city. This sounds even more impressive when we consider that the carbon footprint of food production and distribution is reduced because of less oil intensive methods of farming and less energy consumption in transportation. While these benefits alone might make us take a closer look at urban agriculture as part of an alternative food system, the social and individual benefits of having and participating in urban gardens are also coming to be acknowledged.

While more research is needed, empirical studies into green spaces and community gardening have pointed to numerous ways in which interaction with such spaces contributes to individual and community well-being (without forgetting the difference between well-being and well-being under domination). These range from cognitive health benefits, to managing stress, to health rehabilitation. Research also suggests that gardens foster relationships of care and intimacy with others. Also established are the positive correlation between green environments and stronger social ties, along with a sense of safety, participation, and neighbourly assistance.

Community gardens promote healthy eating, but in doing so also build healthy individuals and communities. Studies suggest that those with links to community gardens are more likely to consume more fruits and vegetables more often. Participation in gardens increases aesthetic and emotional appeal of food and expands dietary possibilities. Youth participating in Detroit urban farming programs are more likely to try new things, and there is recognition that the type of gardening done promotes deeper relationships with food; including the ways that food brings people together, and builds a sense of responsibility and self-worth. Inter-generational conversation and learning occur in communal preparation of food and eating at a common table.

The cooperative process of growing food contributes to enjoyment with others, as well as developing social relationships based on reciprocity and trust. Studies based on interviews with gardeners found that they tend to be proud of the appearance and productivity of their gardens and tend to be motivated by this – a commitment to being responsible and productive. While some relationships of garden activity are formalized, others are based on forms of interpersonal trust. The community garden comes to be a place to share work, company, and produce – some gardeners end up giving away more than they consume. Typically, community gardeners find the work itself enjoyable and sociable. In all, some community garden projects point to the possibility of humanized production and human fulfilment by being sites of non-alienated production and exchange.

Participation in gardens also fosters ecological learning, an appreciation of nature that goes beyond understanding its use-value, the recognition of an inextricable attachment to the non-human biophysical world, and development of an understanding that this biophysical world has a tempo (a kind of subjectivity) all its own that we neglect at risk to our own health and the health of the non-human world. This sense of time and respect for biophysical processes is all the more important in a culture that has so separated itself from non-human nature, anaesthetized its human bodies for the sake of cycles of production and consumption, and has such an allergic reaction to the fluid and often dirty processes of life.

Discussions on community gardens often turn to the case of Detroit, and for good reason. Once a booming auto industry centre, Detroit City had become synonymous with industrial decline and urban decay in North America, long before the recent financial crisis – a decline marked by unemployment and poverty for an intercity majority Black population. The wake of population exodus and deindustrialization has meant social and economic decline and a negative impact on the food system. While reports that there are no grocery stores in Detroit are unfounded, Mari Gallagher’s 2007 documentation of Detroit ‘food deserts’ has relevance insofar as it highlighted areas in which economic and physical barriers limit access to affordable food. Detroit has many outlets with food, but this does not mean that distribution of food is not a problem because of access and quality – access and quality highlight the racial inequality in the city. For a number of factors from the availability of vacant land to the continuing poverty and unemployment, a vibrant urban and community farming movement has, for some years, filled a vital needs void and will play a larger role in the years ahead.

As suggested above, participants in urban garden projects tend to see them as more than mere food production projects. They are a rejection of processed food options and low quality produce that are considered options, and a demand for healthy food from sustainable environments. For groups like the D-Town Farm, the largest urban garden project in Detroit, the project is a rejection of the established food system itself, a way to produce and distribute food that prioritizes community ownership and environmental sustainability. Run by the Detroit Black Community Food Security Network (DBCFSN), D-Town is framed as a food sovereignty political project. In a Democracy Now interview, Malik Yakini, the DBCFSN Chair, defined the project as a Black self-determination project that insists that any plan for urban agriculture in the city benefit the black majority. The community, he stated is “not interested…where the corporate sector comes in and only uses the majority of people as workers. We’re concerned about control and ownership.” The farm is meant to be a model not only of sustainable agriculture, but a model for social, economic, and political projects appropriate for the city. Monica White, a sociologist participating in the project, interviewed farmers deeply involved in the project and found time and again that the project “dealt with their efforts to be agents of their own transformation, and the city of Detroit by claiming the human right to food.” The project consciously “challenges the social structure that is supposed to provide access to healthy foods” – a challenge that rejects both government and the market and claims control of responsibility for itself. Yakini and other community garden activists are opposed to the potential of capitalization of urban gardening and the establishment of large, for-profit agricultural enterprise even when money managers promise productivity, tax revenues, and ‘decent jobs.’ Too many of the qualitative benefits, the phenomenological experience of aesthetic-productivity and the layers of personal and community relations and the reciprocity it fosters, would inevitably be destroyed – a return to wage, corporate, and other dependencies and all they entail.

While the urban food movement will have to find ways of embracing those who value the gardens differently (not all in any community agree with them or see them as long term projects) and those cynics who have yet to discover their value, a picture of the objective possibilities of these environments as part of a transformation certainly seems to be becoming clearer. It is time to consider how these decentralized, local food projects may initiate or enable a process of disintegration of capitalist mass food production, its system of unsustainable industrial farming and corporate supermarkets, not only because alternatives are becoming more necessary, but also because they appear to work better both economically and qualitatively. As suggested, a challenge to the way food is produced and consumed is a challenge to the way we understand and experience nature and our own aesthetic being; these most basic needs, as the social philosopher Marcuse stressed, “are the claims of the human organism, mind and body, for a dimension of fulfillment which can be created only in the struggle against the institutions which, by their very functioning, deny and violate these claims.” They can have a subversive quality and can therefore be a challenge to a whole way of life when germinated in the right climate. While urban garden projects are in no way sufficient for transforming the world, they can certainly have a positive role not only because of their material potential, but also because they foster relationships and sensibilities that challenge domination and open up new possibilities for human being.

Jenelle Regnier-Davies

During winter holiday break, I finally had the chance to crack open a book I had been carrying around for months. Although Vandana Shiva’s Stolen Harvest was published 12 years ago, I can’t help but feel that it is an imperative read for passionate (and non-passionate) eaters alike.

Regardless of my passion for Shiva’s written word, my intention is not to write a review on any one of her pieces of work (or to rant about the wrong doings of Cargill or Monsanto); rather, it is to speak to our current climate of food crisis. More specifically, my purpose is to bring attention to the food we eat, and relate it to the recent Occupy movement, which shook city streets across the globe during 2011.

After recent talks in Los Angeles, Joanne Poyourow published an article about an event where she spoke with Shiva herself. In the article, when asked about what she would say to those involved in the Occupy movement, Shiva simply nodded, gently smiled, and commented, “I’d tell them…Occupy your Life.”

Similar to Poyourow, these words from Shiva’s mouth resonated with me. If we should look to the Occupy movement for any lessons, it would be that there are areas within our everyday lives which we can utilize for the fight against political injustice.

After speaking with my friend and YUFP colleague Aaron Manton about these ideas, he connected Shiva’s words to those of Ralph Waldo Emmerson. A transcendentalist, Emmerson spoke about living deliberately, and the concept of being completely invested in everything we do. By being aware of the ramifications and the significance of every aspect of our lives, we can bring food into a broader political context. Similarly, situationists express that politics are not a separate sphere from other aspects of life. With this in mind, we can recognize that the politics of justice is intrinsically related to the food we eat, and that political revolution must take place within the scope of the everyday.

Most politically driven foodies would agree that this is not easy to do. In almost every direction we look, the very companies we wish to fight against market the ‘ethical’ food choices we may be attracted to. The Canadian labelling system (or lack thereof) prevents consumers from making informed choices, and refuses to enforce any element of transparency that would allow consumers to know what really is in their food, and who benefits from its purchase.

However blasphemous this may be, there are solutions. The real solution we need to focus on is training ourselves to be more self-resilient, self-reliant, and sufficiently capable of feeding ourselves apart from a system that insists on harming us. By learning some basic food skills and refraining from purchasing processed and packaged foods, we are limiting the amount of money that will eventually be stuffed into the pockets of that 1%. With this in mind, I share with you a couple of food tips that have helped me in recent years, and I hope you, our faithful readers, will benefit from them. Here are my top five foodie must-haves that every activist should place on their culinary agenda, in an attempt to ‘occupy their lives.’

#5: Make Stock

To be a politically minded cook, the first step is to become more aware of the waste we create in our day-to-day lives. Consumer culture, which many of us fall victim to, influences us to see very valuable things as waste. The reason I list stock as a primary ‘foodie must-have’ is because I feel it is an integral step to utilizing more and reducing waste. It will help you spend less, eat better, and be more conscious of the value of the foods we are privileged to have access to. My advice is to show your food the respect it deserves, and to get as much as possible out of it.

Stock can be used in your kitchen in a variety of ways. It can be a base for homemade soups, or a cooking liquid for grains, legumes, or even pasta. Using stock adds additional flavour and nutritional value to your food, and can be helpful for those who are refraining from salt or other synthetic flavouring agents.

Method for Vegetable Stock:

Throughout the week, keep the ends and bits of vegetables that you don’t include in your everyday meals. Good examples would be onions ends, brussels sprout cores, mushroom stems, woody asparagus stems, and the like. Keep these in a bag in your vegetable drawer, and at the end of the week, place all of it in all in a pot, and cover with water. If you want to make it extra flavourful, add some garlic, pepper, or other herbs like rosemary or thyme to the mix.

Place the pot on high heat to bring to a boil. After it comes to a boil, reduce to a simmer, or a gentle boil. You do not want to break down the vegetables by boiling; but rather extract the flavours, aromas, and nutrients slowly. This will take only 30-40 minutes. After, strain using a fine sieve, and cool. I like to keep old yogurt containers to divide 1L portions of the stock and freeze.

Method for Chicken Stock:

If you eat chicken, and happen to purchase it on the bone, keep the bones in the freezer until you have collected a substantial amount (enough to fill a soup pot half way). I am not encouraging you to buy KFC and keep the bones after you have gnawed off the meat. But if you happen to roast a chicken, keep the carcass and use it for stock. Alternatively, many grocers and butcher shops have a large number of animal bones in their inventory. If you ask at the counter they will often sell chicken, beef, or fish bones for very little. Sometimes they will even give bones away to get them off their hands (much becomes waste…trust me, I worked in a butcher shop!).

Place the chicken bones in a pot and cover with cold water, leaving room to add vegetables later. It is important to use cold water, as it helps to slowly extract impurities (blood and minerals) while the liquid comes to a slow simmer. A murky foam will form on the surface. Skim this off, and then add vegetables, herbs, and pepper. Let simmer on a low temperature for at least an hour. The same general time is needed for making turkey or other poultry stock.

General Stock Tips:

Most people who make stock routinely suggest that you include three main vegetables: carrots, onions, and celery. This blend is called a mirepoix, which is used to make the base flavour for any soup or sauce. If you intend to make soup with your stock, consider adding some or all of these for a better, more well-rounded flavour.

If you want to make fish stock, the general process if similar. Avoid making stock from the bones of greasy fish, like salmon, however; the result will be overwhelming and unappealing. It generally takes around 45 minutes of simmering time to make fish stock.

For beef stock, the simmering process is substantially longer. Since it takes approximately three to four hours to extract the flavour and collagen from beef bones, refrain from adding vegetables until the last hour of simmering. For a robust, flavourful beef stock, roast bones before submersing in water.

#4: Cook Grains and Cereals

A few weeks ago, I was in Loblaws and came across a ready-made ‘lunch kit’ for kids that contained pre-cooked white rice in one plastic compartment and a syrupy-looking ‘vegetable’ sauce in another. To my horror, this product was on the shelf far from any fridge, sitting in a warm isle. I was completely taken aback, not only by the sheer fact this product exists, but also that people actually purchase it.

It is understandable that time is a constant issue for people when it comes to cooking. However, buying such products contributes to own ‘de-skilling’ in food preparation. By purchasing ready-made food products, we are giving companies our hard earned food dollars when we could be using them to purchase whole, unprocessed, and healthier foods. Do not allow these companies to convince you that you do not have the skill to cook your own food; you do.

The pilaf method is one of the most time-effective ways of cooking grains and cereals, not to mention one of the tastiest. My favourite dish these days is quinoa. A few weeks a ago, a friend of mine posted on Facebook that “quinoa is the new rice.” I didn’t have the heart to tell him that quinoa isn’t a grain at all. Rather, it is a seed from a plant that is related to both beets and spinach. If you look closely, the seed looks like a small spiral. If left to soak in water at room temperature overnight, it will sprout, making it easier to digest and higher in nutritional worth.

Like actual grains, quinoa is delicious when cooked as a pilaf. The pilaf method involves gently toasting the grain/seed, and then cooking it with some form of liquid. By using the exact measure of liquid to make the grain tender (rather than boiling in a large amount of water and draining it), the nutritional value is retained, as is the flavour. This method also requires limited supervision and provides fail-safe results; pilafs are always fluffy, tender, and delicious.

Recipe: Basic Quinoa Pilaf

1 cup dried quinoa
1 and ¾ cups vegetable stock (If you have handy. Water or orange juice can be used as a replacement.)
1 small onion, diced
1 tbsp. pure olive oil, or vegetable oil

Method:

In a medium pot, gently sauté the onion in oil on medium to low heat. When translucent, add and toast the quinoa, stirring occasionally. Toast for about a minute, then add liquid and bring to a boil on high heat. When boiling commences, cover with a lid and turn down to low, cooking for approximately 20 minutes. Lift lid and stir. Check the bottom of the pot to see if any liquid remains. If so, leave to cook for several more minutes. If not, then shut off heat and let rest, covered, for 5-10 minutes. After resting, fluff with a fork and serve. Pilaf goes great with stews and curries.

Tips:

This method also allows for some creativity. I like to toast spices and herbs while I toast the grain. Try making this recipe with turmeric, coriander, and cumin to make a ‘curried’ version. Another flavourful option is to use juices, such as orange juice or apple cider.

Keep in mind that each grain or cereal requires a different amount of water in order to be cooked to a tender state, so please pay attention to the water-to-dry-ingredient ratio on labels or online. Most long grain white rice is cooked at a ratio of 1:1.5 (one cup rice to one and a half cups of liquid). Brown rice is much more time consuming, and requires much more liquid. However, whole grains are much tastier, and higher in nutritional content.

#3: Salad Dressing

Everyone, I mean everyone, has the time to do this. I cringe when I see bottles of salad dressing made by Kraft (or the like) in people’s fridges. I swear, those companies have brainwashed the entire world into thinking salad dressing is a complicated and un-doable thing, convincing people to pay $5 a pop for a plastic bottle of goo that tastes like…plastic. I swear it has become my life’s goal to convince people otherwise. Making your own dressing is really very easy.

Recipe: Basic Emulsified Dressing

½ cup olive oil, or any other oil you have kicking around
½ tbsp. mustard (can use yellow, Dijon, or grainy… same diff)
1-2 tbsp. vinegar: best to use balsamic, apple cider, or white wine vinegar. Avoid white pickling
vinegar – it is far too acidic
To taste salt/pepper

Method:

Place mustard in the bottom of a bowl (any bowl…a cereal bowl will do). I like to put a moist towel under the bowl to prevent it from flying when whisking. Now, slowly whisk the vinegar in. Next, slowly – very slowly – whisk the oil into the mustard/vinegar mixture. You will see the mixture thicken slightly. A secret protein is hidden in mustard that blends the molecules of the vinegar to the oil, binding them together. This creates a smooth, velvety-like dressing without the added stabilizers and other crap the big companies feed you in those plastic bottles. If you want, make a butt-load and keep it in a jar in the fridge.

Tips:

Note that some vinegars bind better with oil than others due to their acidity levels. Balsamic vinegar holds the best and the longest. It is definitely my favourite.

If you are feeling creative and/or have extra ingredients on hand, this recipe can be modified easily. If you have aging, soft fruit, feel free to use it in the dressing. Often, I peel and seed pears that are not looking so good and puree them with a hand blender. Just put fruit in an old (oh so handy) yogurt container, and blend with a hand mixer. Then, add the ingredients listed above. You can do this with any softer fruit, frozen berries, tomatoes, or avocadoes. Be creative.

#2: Make Bread

At one of the lowest points in my life, I was living on College Street with not a penny to my name and an empty apartment. Jobless, phoneless, and back in the Toronto after a two-year hiatus, I found myself hungry and alone. Luckily, the last tenants left behind some old flour, and I scraped together some change for a package of yeast. I made focaccia.

Because I was in Little Italy, I had a back yard, which was overgrown with mint and basil amongst a meadow of dandelions. Hidden were a couple ripening tomatoes that the last tenant had planted and left, unloved. I plucked a bit of this and a bit of that, and made a gourmet snack for myself that my grandmother would be proud of. I thank her today for teaching me the art (and simple craft) of making my own bread.

Making bread is one of the easiest and surprisingly quick things to make. After getting the feel, it is relatively simple to make without even a recipe. It is also completely and utterly satisfying to know that you can sustain yourself, if need be, for a minimal amount of money.

Recipe: Basil, Mint, and Tomato Focaccia

1 tsp. white sugar or honey
1 package active dry yeast (¼ ounce)
⅓ cup warm water (110 degrees…think slightly warmer than body temp)
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 tbsp. olive or vegetable oil
¼ tsp. salt (coarse is best, but table salt works fine)
1 handful basil and mint
1 ripe tomato (preferably scavenged), sliced

Method:

Turn on the tap and run the water on warm, holding your hand under it. When it starts to feel slightly hotter than your hand, measure ⅓ of a cup. Feel free to use a thermometer, but I find the bowl and measuring devices often cool down such a small amount of water. It’s better to do it by feel.

Dissolve the sugar and yeast in the water, in a large bowl. Let stand until it begins to foam – about 10 minutes. Now, combine the yeast mixture with flour; stir well to combine. Stir in extra water a little at a time, until all of the flour is absorbed.

When the mass starts to look like dough, empty it out onto a lightly floured counter and knead for about a minute. Wash and dry the bowl, then oil it lightly. Coat the doughy mass in the oil, and cover with a damp cloth and let rise in a warm place until doubled in size, about 30 minutes.

Preheat oven to 475ºF (245ºC). Flop dough on a lightly floured counter and knead a bit more. It will deflate but that’s okay, it’s supposed to happen. Squish the dough into a flat disc and place on a greasy baking sheet. Olive oil is delicious…just sayin’. Using the tips of your fingers, poke indents all over. Brush a bit more oil over top, sprinkle on some salt, and throw on some of that sliced tomato. Bake in preheated oven for 10-20 minutes, depending on desired crispness. If you like it moist and fluffy, then you’ll have to wait only about 10 minutes. Pull it out and let rest for a few minutes. Rip up the mint and basil by hand and sprinkle on top. Now eat!

#1: Grow Food!

The ultimate way for people to really grasp their self-sufficiency in this consumerist, capitalist society is to learn how to grow food. I know, I know…in the city it is hard, and there really is no time between classes and work to manage…a garden! But by taking the time to at least know how to sprout a seed or plant a tomato plant, you will see some level of financial benefit while also gaining that liberated feeling.

In Toronto, there are plenty of opportunities to purchase or exchange seeds with fellow food lovers. This year, the infamous Seedy Saturday event spread over the course of three days in five different communities, a new precedent in our city. Not only is there the opportunity to obtain interesting seeds, but there is a number of seminars and workshops for both new and experienced gardeners. Visit http://www.tcgn.ca/wiki/wiki.php for the schedule.

In addition, the spread of community garden plots has become a viable way for people without space to get their hands into some soil. Only a few short months ago I witnessed gardeners harvesting corn from the plots of land they occupied between railroads and in ditches. On campus here at York, Maloca Gardens offers space for students to learn from one another and the space needed to cultivate edibles. Get in touch with them; I hear they are a pretty nice group of people: http://malocagarden.wordpress.com/.

Author bio: A child of a prairie agricultural community, Jenelle was raised understanding the importance of food. After 12 years of working in kitchens across Canada and overseas, Jenelle has left the culinary world in the hopes of making positive social change in the realm of food. She currently studies at York University in the Faculties of Environmental Studies and Geography. She hopes to one day work for, or to develop, a food project of her own where she can help people ‘re-skill’ and gain food knowledge. For now she uses the YU Free Press as a soapbox for expressing her concerns.

Photographer bio: Katie Lysakowski was raised in Ontario, but currently lives in Vancouver, where she cooks for a living and for pleasure. Several years ago, she traded in her fancy office clothes and corporate job to chase her dream of being a professional cook. Today, she is a photographer, a wannabe cheese maker, a gardener, a butcher, and has recently taken up an interest in fermenting apples in an attempt to make booze. For explorations of Katie’s food photography, visit http://aquestforculture.blogspot.com/.

Darcy Higgins

Background

In 2011, an application for a giant quarry by an American hedge fund came to light in Melancthon Township, near Orangeville ON. The project would be the second largest open-pit mine in North America and has been strongly opposed by residents due to its threats to local farmland, groundwater, and ecosystems.

The company bought 8,000 acres of land, informing local farmers that they intended to create Ontario’s largest potato farm. In reality, they applied to build a quarry. The project needs provincial approval to go through, but after significant efforts by Ontarians, the provincial government announced that a rare “full environmental assessment” would be required to assess the impacts of the quarry before a decision is made.

If there’s something we learned from our province’s 30,000+ person contribution to World Food Day, FoodStock, it’s that Ontarians (both urban and rural folk) strongly value their farmland, local food jobs, and the delicious dishes we make from it all.

This shouldn’t be taken for granted.

Not long ago, we didn’t have the type of food culture and economy we do today. Although we did have many more farmers, it is unlikely that we would have found tens of thousands of people making their way to a distant land on a chilly autumn afternoon just to take a political stand regarding their local food.

In the past, a proposal for a giant open-pit mine would have brought about concerned environmentalists focused on water quality and land degradation, alongside concerned locals who worry about environmental threats to their community. While these groups have again led the opposition, they have found that their greatest support is now coming from a burgeoning movement comprised of people who consider food the primary reason to put their booted feet down.

Our present food system allows corporations, speculators, and hedge funds to make growing profits from higher food prices, land ownership, and destruction of the commons, while farmland loss, levels of food bank use, and atmospheric carbon continue to skyrocket. As the food movement grows, links are being made among a spectrum of stakeholders from farm labourers to those who experience urban poverty.

The ‘Stop the Mega-Quarry’ team has the strength to be a winning one. This large and diverse group should also lend their attention to other ongoing battles to halt the loss of farmland, no matter the jurisdiction. It is important that they focus on expanding and strengthening the Greenbelt, and pushing for provincial legislation to limit the scope of gas plants, mines, and sprawl. The Greenbelt, though good for the land, has failed to bring much benefit to farmers in the region. Through discussion of a variety of possibilities, Sustain Ontario and their partners could potentially help farmers more effectively feed cities and themselves, while also helping to counter the economic forces that push farmers to sell rather than keep their land.

Alliances are needed between with farmers, farm workers, and food processors in order to create policies that work for all aspects of the commodity chain. This movement, brought about by tens of thousands of people, is capable of not only shifting the political tide, but might also lead to more democratic discourse and policy change. We need to work to preserve farmland, and to create or improve programs and jobs that help to provide local, just, sustainable Ontario food to all.

The cue has come from the food sovereignty and food democracy movements of our southern neighbours. We must take food power back and return it to the hands of the people. With local and global sentiments for change and a stronger, burgeoning food movement, there could not be a better time to draw a line in our land, to raise our voice, and to say what we stand for.

Darcy Higgins is the founder of Food Forward and is a long-time advocate, writer, and organizer on sustainability issues. He has advised politicians and officials at institutional, municipal, provincial, and federal levels. Darcy maintains key interests in diversity, community engagement, and social media and enjoys exploring Toronto’s natural and built environments. He can be reached at: darcy@pushfoodforward.com.

Food Forward is a Toronto-based food advocacy organization that works to provide food that is healthy, local, sustainable, ethically produced, and accessible for all. Food Forward welcomes you to join the growing people-powered food movement. Become a member at: www.pushfoodforward.com/join.

For more information, and to sign the petition against the mega quarry, visit http://www.stopthemegaquarry.ca/.

To learn more about Sustain Ontario, please visit http://sustainontario.com/.

Devlin Kuyek

A spike in food prices in 2008 pushed the number of hungry people in the world past the one billion mark. It was not a temporary phenomenon. Those record prices are now back on international markets.

Most of today’s hunger happens in the countryside. About 80% of those without enough food to eat are the people who produce food – farmers and rural labourers. People are not starving because of a global shortage of food, but rather because they do not have the money to buy the food they need or have access to the resources they need to produce it for themselves – land, water, animals, fish, etc.

And things are set to get much worse. By 2080, under a business as usual scenario, climate change is predicted to reduce global agricultural yields by a staggering 16%, while the population continues to grow. The worst effects will be felt in the South, in countries like Senegal. Already beset by high population growth and severe food insecurity, Senegal is predicted to see a 50% decline in agriculture productivity before the end of the century. To this we have to add an increase in extreme weather, such as droughts and typhoons that will severely disrupt agricultural production and leave twice as many people living in highly water-stressed environments.

In this context, the world desperately needs a food system that can ensure that food is distributed to everyone, according to need. The food crisis of 2008 should have driven home the message. But the governments and corporations that manage the dominant food order have refused to change course. So, three years later, things have gone from bad to worse for the poor while the rich pursue a ruthless grab to turn the food crisis into a profit bonanza.

Making a killing from hunger

The ugly truth of the 2008 food crisis was that the corporations that control the global food system made a killing. Farmers saw little change in their income, but the largest grain traders, the seed and pesticide companies, and the fertilizer corporations made record profits. Decades of structural adjustment, neo-liberal trade and investment policies, and Green Revolution programs had provided these corporations with immense power in the food system, and they used their positions to hold the world hostage to their price demands. In Apr. 2008, when the food crisis was at its peak, Cargill, the biggest agribusiness company in the world, was making nearly US$500,000 profit an hour.

The boom times are still on. This year’s numbers for the grain traders and input suppliers are breaking the 2008 records. US-based ADM’s third quarter profits for 2011 were up 37% from the year before, at $578 million, while Cargill tripled its second quarter profits this year, pulling in a hefty $1.5 billion.

Such profits have attracted the sharks from Wall Street, Bay Street, London City, Singapore, Dubai, and other financial centres. Over the past decade they started making big bets on speculation in agricultural commodities, as have pension funds and other institutional investors. In 2000, around US$5 billion were involved in speculation on the trade of commodities but by 2007 it surged to US$175 billion dollars. The huge influx of cash, nearly all of it going into futures or ‘long’ positions, creates a bubble-like phenomenon, encouraging overall upward price movements and periodic bursts. The result is a grain market that is both completely out of sync with supply and demand dynamics, with grain price movements now following the price curves of non-food commodities like copper. The volatility makes life miserable for farmers who crave stability but it’s ideal for speculators, who profit from price movements, especially since some of the biggest speculators are in fact the transnational grain merchants, able to use their global information systems to bet on price swings, as the Swiss company Glencore did just before Russia imposed on wheat export ban last summer.

The financial sector is also investing directly in agribusiness corporations, which then use these cash injections to buy up smaller firms, expand production, and take over new markets. These inflows, combined with support from home governments, have led to the emergence of a new crop of agribusiness giants based in the South. The world’s largest meat company, JBS, is Brazilian. The largest agribusiness company is the Malaysian palm oil and rubber corporation Sime Darby. China, India, Singapore, Thailand, and the Gulf States also have their own emerging agribusiness transnationals. The agribusiness push is no longer just North-South.

The global land grab

Perhaps the most brutal expression of this new corporate food order is the rush for farmland that was triggered by the food and financial crises of 2008. According to the World Bank, from the start of 2008 to the end of 2009, foreign investors acquired, either through purchase or long-term lease, over 56 million hectares of farmland. The International Land Commission now puts that number at 80 million hectares. The activist research group Genetic Resources Action International (GRAIN) has been tracking the global farmland grab since it began in 2008 and we estimate that over $100 billion has been mobilized by investors to purchase farmlands overseas for the production of foods for export.

Two types of actors are essentially driving this land grab. On the one hand, there are cash-rich, but food-poor, countries, like Saudi Arabia and South Korea, who were badly burned by the food crisis and lost faith in the global market to provide for their food needs. Their strategy: bypass the Cargills and Glencores by acquiring farmland overseas to produce food and ship it back home.

The other key actors are from the financial sector. Reeling from the financial crisis of 2008, hedge funds, pension managers, and the other financial players starting looking for a safe and profitable refuge from the crumbling stock market. The argument for farmland was pretty clear: population is going up, people need to eat, and the global farmland area is pretty much at its limit already. A large number of farmland funds were launched that year and their numbers continue to swell. In Oct. 2009, GRAIN identified 120 of them, and each week a new one seems to come on the scene. Some of the more recognizable players include the Carlyle Group (buying oil palm and sugarcane plantations in Latin America), Goldman Sachs (investing in hog farms in China), AIG (taking over farmlands in Brazil), George Soros (acquiring rice, soybean and cattle operations in the Southern Cone of Latin America), Cargill (buying dairy farms in China), and the Alberta Investment Management Co, manager of the province’s largest pension funds (scoping out agricultural land in Australia).

Africa is a main target for these land grabs. Sudan and Ethiopia have given foreign investors over a million hectares each, typically for less than $10/hectare. Hundreds of thousands of hectares occupied by peasants and pastoralists have been handed out in Mali, Tanzania, Zambia, the Congo, Gabon, the list goes on. But the land grabs are also happening in Latin America, especially in the Southern Cone, and in Asian countries, like Indonesia, Cambodia, Laos, and Papua New Guinea. Australia, Russia, and Eastern Europe are also big targets. Canada is also on the radar.

Canada is one of those countries that is both a source and a target of foreign farmland investors. While Chinese investors have been looking at canola production in Saskatchewan and hog farms in Quebec, Bay Street investors like Sprott Resources and Lawrence Asset Management have been buying into farmland in Uruguay and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, as well as on the Canadian prairies.

Governments play a big role in all of this. The governments of India, China, South Korea, Libya, Singapore, the Gulf States, and even Bangladesh are all actively backing plans for foreign investment in overseas farmland. They work out investment agreements with the host countries and supply part or all of the necessary capital to their private sector companies. But it is the private sector that runs the show. To give an example, the Mauritian government negotiated for 20,000 hectares of land in Mozambique, as part of a plan to ensure its own food security, but those lands were then signed over to a Singaporean company, operating out of Mauritius, that intends to use them to produce rice for export.

Supermarket storm

There’s another piece to this emerging picture of corporate control that needs to be mentioned. Since the 1990s, supermarkets have been expanding rapidly into the South and Central Europe – places where they were hardly present before. Their growth in these areas, made possible by free trade and investment agreements, is occurring five times as fast as it did in North America and Western Europe.

Mexican food markets were essentially local ten years ago – controlled by small grocery stores, street vendors, and farmers. But today, three out of every ten pesos spent on food in Mexico is spent at a Walmex (owned by Walmart). The impacts are obvious for the small-scale vendors but are equally severe for food producers. Walmart only buys from preferred suppliers that ensure that the food is produced according to the standards set by Walmart. Walmart dictates the exact shape of the fruit, the seeds that are used, even the number of toilets each farm operation must have, while the grower pays for all the costs of certification and compliance. The Walmarts of this world are thus completely inaccessible to small growers.

So as Walmart and other retailers expand into the South, farmers lose access to markets, while the big suppliers move to set up their own farms and consolidate exclusive contracts with a few large-scale producers.

Supermarket expansion, land grabs, and financial speculation: it all adds up to a huge expansion of the agribusiness frontier and a massive transfer of lands (and water!) from peasants and pastoralists to the rich. In the process, the small-scale sustainable agriculture that supplies local food markets is displaced by large-scale industrial plantations that supply food to global markets controlled by corporations. None of this is about producing more food or feeding more people; it’s all about who gets to control and profit from the production of food and who gets to eat.

Time for a food revolution

Despite the alarming expansion of the corporate food order, there is every reason to believe that we can turn things around. It is now crystal clear that the dominant model is bankrupt – it cannot fulfill the most basic function of feeding people and it is doing a miserable job of providing for people’s livelihoods. Governments and corporations have no palatable solutions on offer either.

Change has to come from us. And there is a growing global movement pushing back on the corporate food system and building the foundations for an alternative model, what many call food sovereignty.

Across the planet, food has become a central issue for social movements and a source of inspiration. In Korea, for instance, millions of people occupied the streets two years ago in protest against the free trade agreement with the US. The focus of their rage was the removal of restrictions on US beef protecting Koreans from BSE. It wasn’t so much a fear of mad cow disease that united and mobilized Koreans as it was a rejection of a model of factory farming and food culture that most Koreans strongly oppose. We have many examples that show how food systems work when they are in the hands of local communities. With dairy, for instance, 80% of the milk consumed in the developing world is provided by the ‘informal sector,’ by people heading deep into the countryside on bicycles and motorbikes to collect milk from farmers with one or two cows and bring this into small towns and major urban centres. The milk generates livelihoods for millions of people (farmers, vendors, cheese makers, etc.) and provides fresh, nutritious food to billions of poor consumers at a fraction of the cost of the pasteurized milk sold in tetrapaks at the supermarkets. The safety of the milk is assured through relations of trust and knowledge on the part of both consumers and producers about how to handle it.

People are fighting to protect such systems from corporate take-over. In Colombia, about two million people earn a living supplying leche popular (the people’s milk) to around 20 million Colombians. But looming free trade agreements with the EU and the US will open up the country to the dumping of powdered milk imports that companies like Nestle will use to undercut local milk production. And the government is pursuing legislation to prohibit the sale of pasteurized milk in urban centres, saying that the country’s dairy sector must be modernized to meet its WTO obligations and compete in the global market. But Colombians are resisting. They have taken to the streets and organized sophisticated campaigns that have blocked the government’s attempts to enact the legislation on several occasions.

Here in Canada, we now have a People’s Food Policy to serve as a reference point for activism and new visions for our food and agricultural system. Broad, collective visions are crucial if we are going to successfully work together on such disparate but intimately connected struggles as those for the rights of migrant farm workers, for the maintenance of the Wheat Board, for the banning of GMO crops, or for the reduction in type-two diabetes among First Nations communities.

We can also link the struggle for food sovereignty to the struggle against climate change to build movements. At least half of all greenhouse gas emissions come one way or another from the current food system. We can turn this around to make agriculture a carbon sink. Industrial agriculture has depleted around 1-2% of the world’s soil organic matter over the past 50 years. We can easily rebuild that soil organic matter, by moving to ecological practices that enhance soil fertility (mixed cropping, composting, livestock integration, etc.). In doing so we could capture over a third of the current excess CO2 in the atmosphere. And we could continue building up the organic matter from there. But that kind of shift can only happen when we have farmers doing the farming and local markets that support dynamic rural communities and biodiverse farming. The solutions to the food crisis are thus deeply intertwined with solutions to the climate crisis and the larger question of global poverty. The steps to get there are not so complex: genuine agrarian reform, local markets, biodiversity, a decentralization of decision-making, all things that social movements have been demanding for decades. There are no technical hurdles standing in the way, only political ones.

Devlin Kuyek is a researcher with GRAIN, a small international organization based in Barcelona, Spain. This article first appeared in the May/Jun. 2011 issue of Canadian Dimension.

Drew Woodley

In the years since I graduated from York, I meet two kinds of students: those who love The Absinthe Pub and Coffee Shop, and those who have never been there.

On a campus subjected to florescent lighting and poured concrete, The Absinthe (or simply ‘The Ab,’ if you’ve been there more than once), is fashioned with dark wood walls and brass fixtures, giving it genuine warmth, otherwise hard to find at York. At a university where corporate culture dominates, The Ab stands as an oasis of independent thought. Much of its décor, paintings, and classic absinthe advertising came from students. In essence, the student-owned business has stood the test of time, and continues to leave a mark on the countless people who walk through its doors.

The Ab sits in a quiet corner of the basement of Winters College. It boasts an excellent draft beer selection, including a solid combination of microbreweries and pub staples like Guinness. It offers a variety of options, ranging from fresh sandwiches, to nachos, to an impressive and ever growing array of healthy, tasty entrees and specials. If you’re interested in plastic cups and another deep-fried meal, look elsewhere. If you want a pub in the truest sense, good food, good drink, and a warm, welcoming atmosphere, The Ab is the place you are looking for.

At its heart, The Absinthe is a student pub. Fifteen years ago every undergraduate college council on the Keele campus had its own bar. Today, only The Absinthe remains. This in no small part is a reflection of its friendly, welcoming atmosphere and a shared understanding that it is more than just a business; it is a part of the community.

Owned by the Winters College Council and supervised by a board of current and former students, there is a belief that The Ab is as much a service as it is a business. Most staff are students, who themselves frequent the bar when not working. It is a place to work, to study, and to relax. It also serves as a central meeting point for the Winters community. The relationship between the student body and those who manage the pub goes both ways.

There is a deep sense of devotion among its clientele. In difficult times, students have rallied to protect it. During the strike of 2000/01 Winters residents organized a grassroots campaign to encourage students to eat and drink at The Ab to help keep it afloat until classes resumed. A positive aspect of the drawn-out strike was that it pushed the school year well into May – time enough for patrons to see the beautiful magnolia tree on The Ab’s patio in full bloom.

As other student bars have been unable to survive, The Ab has managed to increase its clientele, welcoming a number of students from across the Keele campus, all the while staying true to its student-friendly mandate.

If students are the heart of The Absinthe, then its soul is its general manager, Ian Pedley. A former York student, Ian has been with The Ab for over 20 years, seeing it through good times and bad. A rock-loving, tattooed guardian, he has welcomed innovations that have strengthened the bar and its connection to the York community, while resisting the pull to mediocrity.

He encourages students to organize events at the pub, like Friday Jazz Nights (in addition to the regular rotation of Wednesday band nights), but eschews cover charges for any reason. He creates mix drinks unique to The Ab, but resists calls to put in a deep fryer, reasoning that good quality food is what a student pub should be serving. On his watch, The Absinthe has built and maintained the reputation of a friendly, safe, and sociable bar.

More than just another campus restaurant, The Absinthe remains a lively and welcoming place distinct from the day-to-day blandness all too prevalent at York. It continues to stay committed to serving good food and drinks at affordable prices, and provides students a community home.

Drew Woodley (York BA 2003, MA 2006) is a former Absinthe employee and current chair of The Absinthe Management Board.

Jacob Kearey-Moreland

Last spring I learned that rhubarb is my kindred vegetable, and I have fallen deeply in love with it since. I am addicted to it, like a drug. Our community garden gang has started pushing it wherever we can, and we have profited greatly from the economics of rhubarb. It is our greatest outreach tool and perhaps, more than any other veg, best represents the spirit of the times. Here are some of my thoughts on the topic, and hopefully, by the end, you too will be inspired to invest in the stalk market this spring!

Ode to Rhubarb

Oh Rhuby, my heart yearns for you in the cold, dark, winter sleep. I think about and taste your sweet sourness sparingly whenever you are defrosted. You are the jam over my morning toast. When you are gone, I mourn, yet I do not forget. When spring has sprung and you are back, I rejoice in what I had lacked. Soon you will rise triumphantly in the frosty spring days when everyone else is afraid to be seen.

In the morning I’ll pull thin red stalks of you from the perennial grandfathered patch; you are older than me. The taste of you raw in the morning is enough to wake the dead; your punchy elixir jolts me with life. Who needs coffee when I’ve got you? In the hot spring sun, paradise is found with you in the shade. Your shape is exotic, so primal and tropical. You are dangerous, your leaves are poisonous.

I love having you for dinner, spending time with you at the table with my family. You are my breakfast, lunch, dinner, and dessert; you are everything for which I yearn. When you are not in my hand, this I cannot stand. I love taking your beautiful slenderness for walks along canopied city streets and presenting you at the market for all to see and delight. So full of life, colour, and flavour, your beauty is breathtaking.

Far too often you are forgotten, undervalued, and overlooked. No longer will you be left to grow and wilt without ever being touched. The more we talk about you with our friends, family, and communities the less these atrocities will be so. Hunger growing side by side with abundance: does this make sense to any of you? Rhuby, your squandered potential growing under our noses, growing right in our back yards, is an injustice. But for the life of us, and a love that’s true – there is something we can do for you…

At first I thought of you as just another spring fling, just another young love; we were so naïve then. In our short time together you have become something so much more to me. You represent the world to me. Whatever you want me to do, I will do it for you. I will get the youth of the village to rescue you! We’ll call together a search party to locate and save you, before it gets hot and you get woody and knotty. Our crew will happily adopt, love, and nurture you, and then, without regrets, we’ll eat you.

But seriously, we are creating an inventory of all the rhubarb in the city. Our goal is to liberate the rhubarb. If you so desire, we can come harvest your overgrown patch. We will make pies, cakes, crumbles, jams, and juices. We will make everything there is to make, and more. We will give you some, nibble on some ourselves, and give the rest to others who are hungry for Rhuby. Rhubarb is a seasonal staple; it is something that brings much joy and asks so little in return. Why not celebrate, promote, and share it? Rhubarb is one of the easiest and earliest growing perennial vegetables, and is stuffed with nutritional goodness, all likely reasons why it is seen growing in yards all over the city. Until we meet again, dearest Rhuby, you will forever be in my heart.

A Natural High

Last year I discovered rhubarb. It was like nothing I had ever tried before, and by mid-summer I was an addict and a pusher. Our community garden gang dealt rhubarb all season, then froze little baggies (rhubaggies) for the winter. We market the highest quality home grown, organic, heritage rhubarb this side of Line 13. We push at various community events: farmers’ market, downtown, uptown, backyards, storefronts, nightclubs, day clubs, beaches, community gardens, and wherever else people meet.

Last summer at the Mariposa Folk Festival in Orillia, we gave away over 300 hits of rhubarb, which is garden slang for a bite size of raw rhubarb. I travelled to other summer festivals and, as the sole supplier, became the Rhubarb Guy. “Hey man did you try the rhubarb?” A ‘rhuby snack’ as it is commonly referred to offers a full-body high lasting three to five seconds. The bitter, sour hit and subsequent juice explosion renders the user temporary stunned. After the face relaxes from the intense puckering, a feeling of ‘wow that ain’t bad’ washes over. It is the perfect spring and summer veggie snack, a true delicacy. Caution: rhubarb is a ‘gateway veg’ and will lead to much harder veg down the road, like beets and rutabaga.

The Economics of Rhubarb

Rhubarb grows so abundantly that the plan is to plant it everywhere, and simply give it away for free to everyone. It is so addictive that people, especially youngsters, often become hooked and will rush back to the garden looking for their next hit. In order to ensure sustained growth in the rhuby business, we plan to continue diversifying our produce, growers, distributors, partners, and eaters.

We harvest the seeds when the rhubarb season comes to a close, to teach people about seed saving and diversity. The seeds are those brown flakey things where the white flowers used to be. As with most seeds, they will germinate and grow when dried, placed in dirt, and have enough water and heat. I’ve also germinated the seeds in small plastic bags, in moist paper towel and then transplanted the sprouts into pots full of compost or a rich soil mixture.

When the rhubarb plant has grown a few inches I then distribute baby rhubies to others in the community, who then raise them as their own. It takes an extra year or so to establish your rhubarb plants from seed compared to splitting, but I find the wait is often worth it. The extra time and care strengthens the bond and sweetens the patch. Sprouting from seeds means we can have hundreds of plants to give away to people, letting the rhubarb grow free and wild. Try it yourself. Plant your rhubaby in full sun and next to your compost bin, as it is a heavy feeder requiring lots of nutrients. If you have an old patch, try digging some up, splitting the rootstock, and starting another patch where there is a demand.

As the debt crisis unfolds, locally and globally, we’ve been encouraging people to invest in stalks of rhubarb. My grandparents invested in rhubarb over 40 years ago, and, now overflowing, I give away my inheritance to anyone who’ll take it. Obviously rhubarb is a sustainable and worthwhile investment that will pay increasing dividends for many generations.

When we reach Peak Rhubarb in mid-summer, the supply falls dramatically while the demand remains stable. As demand outstrips supply, the value of rhubarb stalks grows exponentially. This is when we dealers make a killing.

There are many strategies for extending the rhubarb season. When grown in shade, growth is stunted yet can last longer into the year. Cutting back flowers helps prolong growth. Rhubarb is best raw, jammed, juiced, pied, fried, crumbled, caked, baked, sauced, and stewed. You can chop and freeze them and then hand the rhubaggies out in winter. As long as the rootstocks remain healthy, the value of the stalk is sure to rise every spring.

It is perverse how fresh rhubarb is one of the most expensive vegetables in grocery stores, and it often looks withered and sad, considering how easily it grows all over this land. Everyone used to grow rhubarb, asparagus, berries, and fruit trees among other permanent edibles. Our city was greener and healthier because of it. There is a lot we can learn from the economics of rhubarb and how it applies to our own economy.

Currently our collective investments are unstable and surely can’t be sustained. Our investments lose value over time, while humanity and nature’s abundance are exploited and depleted. We ought to invest in the basics, like food, water, education, health, shelter and renewable energy. Once we adopt the economics of rhubarb we can sit back and watch our investments gain in value as the years go on. It’s time we invest in the real stalk market.

Vive la Rhubarb!

Just as the abundance of air makes it free for all to enjoy, so too can food be available in such abundance as to render the sale of it obsolete. May rhubarb be a symbol for this most radish revolution. Let it bring us together to celebrate love, transcendence, harmony, and abundance.

If you want to be a part of the Rhubarb Revolution peas connect with us online. We can be reached at occupygardenstoronto@gmail.com, Facebook at Occupy Gardens Toronto, or Twitter @OccupyGardensTO. This spring, turnip to the garden and grow with us!

Maryam Adrangi & Laura Lepper

In 2009, immigration enforcement entered a community garden outside a Toronto food bank and deported one of its users. The deportation was but one of the 70-odd sweeps, detentions, and deportations that happen in Toronto every single day, and underscored one of the barriers to food access for undocumented migrants in this country.

While foodies throughout Canadian cities harness innovative ideas to create alternative food systems through urban and rooftop gardens, food share programs, community-supported agriculture, and more, the food movement rarely considers the radical political organizing necessary to make food justice possible for marginalized populations such as undocumented migrants in Canada.

Barriers to Food Justice

As Prime Minister Harper’s anti-immigrant agenda intensifies, access to food, along with critical services such as health care and education, becomes increasingly difficult for undocumented migrants. Harper’s government is pushing for policy that criminalizes immigration, such as Bill C-4 which would punish an undefined group of refugee claimants by detaining them for one year without possibility of independent review. The Conservatives have cut immigrant and refugee acceptance rates but increased the number of temporary foreign workers.

In the Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program (SAWP), foreign workers are not allowed to file for status. As a result of destroyed livelihoods in their countries of origin due to free-trade-facilitated corporate expansion (in which Canadian multinationals are often complicit), thousands of farmers come from Mexico, Guatemala, and elsewhere to work in Canada’s SAWP. Canada creates and perpetuates an unjust situation for these farm workers, who are usually poorly paid, given harsh accommodation, and denied access to services. Numerous studies show high rates of malnutrition and hunger for SAWP workers.

In Canada’s urban centres, food injustice is exacerbated when non-status people face obstacles that others do not. Many with precarious status are either deterred or actively turned away from food banks that ask for identification. Additionally, the monitoring and infiltration of food banks and community gardens by immigration enforcement and police officers presents the food movement with a significant challenge and responsibility: how do we make these spaces safe for the most marginalized among us while also building an effective resistance to the systems that create and perpetuate food injustice?

Working toward Solutions

It was with this challenge in mind that migrant justice group No One Is Illegal Toronto started the Food for All campaign in early 2010. The initiative aims to ensure that undocumented people and those with precarious status can access food regardless of immigration status and without fear of detention, deportation, or being denied these services. Food for All has taken steps to push immigration enforcement out of food banks and help create access without fear in food spaces.

Food for All recognizes that food injustice is a structural, not an individual, issue. “It is important to understand how larger systems perpetuated by colonial Canadian governance…manifest in ways that create barriers to accessing food in the city,” says Yogi Acharya, an organizer with the campaign.

“It is not only about getting rid of barriers but also about dismantling the institutions that create barriers to food justice in the first place,” adds organizer Hannah Peck.

Toward this end, Food for All is building alliances with organizations like The Stop, a community food centre in the Davenport-Perth neighbourhood in Toronto that has implemented a strategy to ensure that people can access food regardless of immigration status. Seeing its work as part of a long-term strategy to decommodify food, The Stop offers a variety of front-line services such as a food bank, a perinatal program, community advocacy, and education on food production and sustainable food systems. Food for All seeks to help spread the centre’s strategies to other food banks and spaces of food provision in the city. In late Sept. 2011, Food for All and The Stop collaborated on an educational event that made connections between the struggles of migrant farm workers and urban hunger.

Food issues are but one of the many platforms for promoting dignity and self-determination of all people. Looking at food issues through the lens of migrant justice – freedom to return, freedom to move, and freedom to stay – shows us that food justice is about much more than just what and how we eat. Food injustice is a symptom of repressive systems and capitalist and colonialist agendas. Political organizing must therefore build the community power needed to resist these systems. Food for All begins its organizing from a recognition that food for all means access to healthy food and personal agency in the food system, regardless of immigration status.

Maryam Adrangi is a researcher, writer, and organizer involved in struggles for environmental justice, Indigenous sovereignty, and anti-war. She is an anti-capitalist who believes in you.

Laura Lepper organizes in Toronto with No One Is Illegal and the First Nations Solidarity Working Group. She is a graduate student in Geography at York University.

This article first appeared in the Sept./Oct. 2011 issue of Briarpatch Magazine.