Last year, over 186,900 lbs of local food was produced on public land in the Greater Toronto Area: the epitome of public land for the public good.
And really, this TRCA land is offering much more than what pounds can measure.
With roughly 15,000 hectares across the jurisdiction, the Toronto and Region Conservation Authority (TRCA) is the largest land owner in the GTA, which includes managing a diverse amount of agricultural land.
Providing accessible fresh local food, growing a diverse range of crops with farmers from all across the world, supporting and training new farmers, providing land and environmental care for that land, encouraging community engagement, education, economic development and more, the TRCA has added immeasurable value to some GTA public land.
Sonia Dhir, Project Manager with the TRCA for 9 years, explains: “TRCA has made some of its land available to grow local for the Toronto region – urban agriculture helps develop sustainable communities by reducing the amount of greenhouse gas emissions related to food transportation and providing opportunities for community engagement and economic development.”
In 2014, the TRCA leased approximately 135 acres of land to farm partners at McVean Farm, Albion Hills Community Farm, Black Creek Community Farm and The Living City Farm – 21 new farmers were engaged, as well as over 4,000 individuals in other educational activities and events.
Sonia tells us that in the past decade, the TRCA experienced a growing understanding in the value of agriculture land, along with the ability to nourish sustainable communities through the production of local food in the city.
The TRCA recognized the opportunity in developing new partnerships and supporting urban farms. They put a conscientious effort into developing appropriate lease frameworks, helping to develop the sites, establishing the infrastructure for sustainable farming (from green houses to lane ways, from parking to irrigation), and treating each farm as its own unique partnership.
Though each urban farm has a strong focus on education, land stewardship, community engagement and supporting local food, it’s important to understand that each farm is different:
McVean Farm in Brampton is run by FarmStart on an incubator farm model, supporting a new generation of farmers. This was the first partnership where TRCA entered into a multi-year lease agreement. Approximately 20 new farmers are trained and supported on this 19-hectare farm each year.
Black Creek Community Farm in Toronto works in partnership with Everdale on a community model. The 3.2 hectares here supports farm education and new farmer training, with a special focus on connecting youth to their food through engaged learning.
The Albion Hills Community Farm is 27 hectares in the Town of Caledon, providing educational programs, space for community gardens, a community supported agriculture service and food grown for local markets and institutions.
The Living City Farm, run by a private farmer, is a 4.8 hectare farm located at the Kortright Centre for Conservation in Vaughan. The site here offers educational programming to school children in partnership with the Kortright Centre, and over 100 varieties of vegetables and fruits are produced.
The food from these urban farms is distributed directly throughout the GTA: through markets, gate sales, or community-supported agriculture programs.
And working to establish sustainable local food procurement models, they are also starting to work with institutional partners to supply food to their facilities. The International Centre in Mississauga is already using food from McVean Farm and The Living City Farm. The Black Creek Community Farm is also providing fresh food directly to Black Creek Pioneer VIllage, a TRCA facility.
The progress over time in supporting agriculture land has been vital to the success of these (and other) projects and their numerous benefits.
When the TRCA acquired their land in the 1950s and 1960s for flood and erosion control purposes, a connection to agriculture certainly existed: for decades TRCA has leased some of its land to farmers. But it is more recent that they have introduced new, diverse farming models that better encourage food to be grown closer to city regions.
Previously, the leases were annual, as agriculture wasn’t considered to be a long-term priority; sometimes the land would get reforested for another project, and the land parcels became quite fragmented. Now, with agriculture more prioritized, they offer 5 year lease agreements/rolling leases, and farmers have more of an incentive to invest in a sustainable farm operation with time to develop proper infrastructure.
A real shift occurred over 10 years ago when the TRCA began to think more about how they could contribute toward sustainable city building and sustainable communities, realizing that food plays a large role in that: you can’t have a sustainable community without good food. Around that time, the TRCA began acknowledging that agriculture could — and should — be a long-term use. They could support local food production close to the city, as well as support new farmers. Of course, farmers would need access to nearby city land.
In 2008 the TRCA developed a Sustainable Near-Urban Agriculture Policy, and made farming a greater priority for TRCA land, addressing the importance of conserving what they had in agriculture.
It’s quite clear that since these new priorities and policies have been established, there has been an unquantifiable amount of good planted for agriculture in these urbanized areas: new farmers, healthy land, engaged youth, and local food – just to name a few.
“It is great to see how public land can become a space where the community comes together to grow, learn about and celebrate food,” shares Sonia.
Sonia Dhir confirms that there are plenty of lessons learned and challenges faced when working through these involved projects and partnerships. Here are a few of her tips:
• It’s important to find the right partners and select the right farming model to develop a successful urban farm project
• Long-term lease tenures are very important to partners wanting to invest on TRCA land
• Ongoing stakeholder communications is very important when developing farm partnerships
• Every TRCA farm is unique and differs from one another – the landscape, partnerships, community and markets define how each farm evolves
Read more on the Toronto and Region Conservation Authority here, and the benefits their urban farms add to our growing community.