PROGRAM DETAILS
Tuesday, June 16, 2026
Connecting focuses on the relationships that strengthen our food systems.
This day will explore how collaboration, shared knowledge, and community partnerships help build resilient and thriving food networks. Join us as we connect ideas, people, and places to grow a stronger food future together.
Plenary - Connecting to the work of the Common Ground Food Forum host networks
More information to come.
Learning Experience - Behind the scenes at The Sharing Place Food Centre (off-site)
Join us for a behind-the-scenes site tour and discussion at The Sharing Place Food Centre in Orillia (sharingplaceorillia.org), a community-based organization working to meet immediate food needs while strengthening the regional food system for the future. This guided tour introduces participants to The Sharing Place’s integrated approach, which combines emergency food support with food recovery, school nutrition, advocacy, and food system planning. Participants will explore how programs are designed to support people today while also contributing to longer-term systems change. The tour will highlight core food access programs, including: Food Bank: Providing a seven-day emergency supply of nutritious food in a non-judgmental environment; Food Recovery: Recovering surplus food from local grocery stores, suppliers, and farmers to support the Food Bank, Meals 4 Change, and community partners; Meals 4 Change: Preparing nutritious, ready-to-heat meals for agencies supporting people who are experiencing food insecurity; School Fuel: Supporting access to nutritious school food by covering 50% of costs and providing free delivery to local schools; Participants will also learn how The Sharing Place works to transform tomorrow through: Food System Planning: Assessing the regional food system and advancing community-driven planning and coordination, with a growing focus on connecting academic food systems research with community knowledge and experience. Advocacy: Applying policy-informed advocacy to poverty reduction, school nutrition, and food system design. This session includes time for questions and dialogue and will be of interest to practitioners, researchers, students, policymakers, and people working in food security, food systems, and equity-focused community action.
Panel - Lessons from our food movement elders: Voices from 50 Years of food movements in Canada
Patricia Ballamingie, Charles Levkoe, Mustafa Koç, Abra Brynne
Food movements across Canada and Indigenous Territories include a wide range of people, experiences, motivations, and goals. Determining future directions along with strategies and tactics demands listening to movement elders and critically reflecting on how we came to this moment. This roundtable shares insights from 28 interviews with leaders from a wide range of food movements over nearly 50 years. We present Appetites for Change: Learning from Food Movement Elders, a collaborative, digital collection of oral histories of the insights, celebrations and tensions of food movement actors. As an intergenerational knowledge resource and movement building tool, this open educational resource (OER) and public-facing website, will be accessible for use in learning, training, and policy contexts. The collection features 5 Indigenous Elders, 7 community-engaged scholars, 12 food movement leaders (primarily from civil society), and 4 emerging food movement leaders, interviewed between 2019 and 2025. Participants reflected on their involvement in (and understanding of) the role of civil society in food systems power and decisionmaking, including: changing contexts over time; effective strategies and tactics; relationships; allyship; Indigenous food sovereignty; and why participation matters. The roundtable will include food movement elders and researchers, and will share insights from the project along with ways that scholars, practitioners and movements might benefit from this resource.
Workshop - Showing up for new farmers: Collaboration and solidarity across research, policy, and advocacy
Ayla Young, Claire Perttula, Maddie Marmor, Rav Singh
Farmers play a critical role in advancing regional food systems, ecological stewardship, and community food sovereignty. Yet they face declining incomes, disinvestment in agricultural extension services, and the escalating impacts of climate change. At the same time, consumers are paying more for food, food insecurity is rising, and access to land remains a major barrier for new and equity-seeking farmers. Despite these challenges, dominant policy frameworks continue to prioritize large-scale, export-oriented agriculture, reflecting narrow assumptions about what kinds of farming are considered “viable” and worthy of public investment. This 90-minute participatory workshop brings together farmer-led organizations, researchers, and movement allies to examine how these assumptions are formed, sustained, and challenged. Co-facilitated by Young Agrarians, the National Farmers Union, and the Ecological Farmers Association of Ontario, the session centers farmer knowledge and lived experience. Through storytelling and dialogue, participants will explore the social, economic, ecological, and cultural contributions of farmers—dimensions of value that are often overlooked in policy and research. Participants will consider how academics, researchers, and non-farmer organizations can more effectively collaborate with farmer-led advocacy efforts. Together, we will identify strategies to address knowledge gaps, strengthen the case for public investment in local food systems, and advance food sovereignty and racial justice. The workshop will also explore how research can be produced and disseminated in ways that are accessible, relevant, and accountable to grassroots movements. Emphasizing mutual learning, reflexivity, and relationship-building, this session will leave participants with a clearer understanding of policy challenges facing farmers, greater awareness of farmer-defined research priorities, and practical ideas for collaboration that bridge research, advocacy, and movement-building in support of more just and resilient food systems.
Lunch & Learn - We eat together: Beyond tokenism in academia
Rey Prudhomme, Jamie Vojvodin
There is a long history between Canadian foodways and Indigenous communities, specifically in the world of academia. Together, we will explore the concepts of inclusion, tokenism, as well as intersectionality within academia through the lens of undergraduate students. Guided discussions examining how academic institutions may or may not provide opportunities for Indigenous individuals will prompt participants to inquire how inclusive and accessible educational opportunities are functioning. Participants will be encouraged to share experiences where they have either seen or not seen themselves or their food practices in an academic or professional environment. As a take away, there will be a final discussion point allowing participants to explore genuine utilization of inclusive language.
Panel (FCN-RCN) - From parallel paths to shared practice: Connecting local food system practitioners
Moderated by Food Communities Network
Panelists: Lesley McMullin, Alyssa Rush, Ben Earle, Bridget King, Lesley McMullin, Sarah Siska
People working at a community-wide level are enthusiastically invited to share knowledge and ideas at this session.
Urban, rural and remote communities coast-to-coast-to coast are advancing local and regional food system work through food policy councils, food networks and other community-based partnerships. Many communities are operating in parallel, often with small teams, limited resources, and significant relational labour that is not always acknowledged and supported.
This panel brings together practitioners from communities across Indigenous Territories/Canada working at local and regional scales to share practice-based insights about what it takes to build and sustain effective local food governance. The session will centre the experience of people leading place-based food system tables that link community initiatives with municipal or regional policy, food system assessments and plans, or strategies. Panelists will reflect on the conditions that support or constrain food system progress at the local/regional scale, including the role of food systems assessments, mobilizing knowledge to support system transformation, cross-sector partnerships, and relationships within and across communities.
The conversation will explore examples of how practitioners navigate geography, institutional structures, funding and political realities while continuing to advance community-led and equity-informed work. This session seeks to build shared understanding among people who are doing similar work, discussing opportunities for strengthening capacity and coordinated food system leadership through Food Communities Network and other networks that connect practitioners across communities.
Panel (CG-TE) - Deepening relations with local food systems, food producers, and food itself
Kathleen Kevany, Pauline Cripps, Helen Vallianatos, Mustafa Koc, Elizabeth Onyango, Alicia Martin
Pillar Round-Table with short topics to invite broad discussion among all participants.
Pauline Cripps, Junior scholar and Community Food Lead, Arrell Food Institute, University of Guelph, will share perspectives on social enterprise barriers and opportunities to scaling sustainability and relationships among grass roots organizations and localized food systems.
Helen Vallianatos, Associate Dean Education & Professor, U Alberta, College of Social Sciences and Humanities will connect pedagogical encounters with local foodways and food producers, examining postsecondary students’ views a decade ago, to now grappling with food choices shaping local food security, and navigating financial and other stressors.
Mustafa Koç, Professor Emeritus, Department of Sociology, Centre for Studies in Food Security, Toronto Metropolitan University, will provide ideas on the threats for food sovereignty, and food security in a changing global political and economic environment.
Elizabeth Onyango, Assistant Professor of Healthy and Sustainable Communities, Public Health, U.Alberta, will convey her insights on experiences of immigrants with the food system – from production to consumption and importation policies and guidelines.
Alicia Martin, early career, Post-doctoral fellow, Common Ground Canada Network, will discuss work in food systems literacy and citizens knowledge, skills, attitudes and values in relation to food systems
Panel - To sustain: Urban and periurban agriculture as part of a zero-emissions food system
Sarah Elton, Ryan Isakson, Aparna Menon, Patrick Harney
Urban and periurban agriculture offer the potential to reduce greenhouse gases and increase food production as well as increase food access. Policy initiatives in the Greater Toronto Area and Golden Horseshoe support this assertion, but our understanding of how environmental, ecological, socio-economic, and policy factors determine the success or failure of UPA across multiple sustainability indicators is remarkably limited.
We are social scientists who are collaborating with scholars in a diversity of fields, as well as with researchers in the community, on a transdisciplinary research project titled TOSustain: Toward sustainable urban and periurban agriculture for net-zero food systems. We are investigating sociopolitical dimensions of reterritorializing food production systems in the GTA and Golden Horseshoe, including food justice.
Our Panel will
1) Develop a definition of peri-urban agriculture, outlining the history and common characteristics that distinguish the ‘peri-urban’ from urban, suburban, and rural spaces, and interpret them in a local context (Aden Fisher, PhD student at the U of T’s Dalla Lana School of Public Health).
2) Report on our research with key peri- and urban food system actors on how to scale-up produce production in the GTA including through a new funding model that remunerates farmers who choose to grow produce in the area (Sarah Elton, assistant professor at the U of T’s Dalla Lana School of Public Health)
3) Explore the vibrant and diverse roles played by independent grocers and mobile vendors that remain invisible in supermarket-dominated retail landscapes and related policy frameworks (Aparna Menon, PhD candidate, U of T’s Dalla Lana School of Public Health)
4) Discuss how pedagogy is deployed as a strategy to advance local food justice objectives through movement building, policy translation and governance engagement (Michael Classes, assistant professor, School of the Environment, University of Toronto), and
5) Critically evaluate how the political economy of land shapes the growing strategies and emancipatory potential of UPA (Patrick Harney, PhD student in geography and planning, University of Toronto (patrick.harney@mail.utoronto.ca) and Ryan Isakson, associate professor, dept geography and planning, University of Toronto (ryan.isakson@utoronto.ca).
Workshop - Young and emerging actors: Keeping systemic change on the agenda
This session explores the challenge of sustaining transformative and disruptive visions within food movements as they grow and institutionalize. Aimed primarily at young or new community organizers, students, and emerging scholars—while remaining open to all interested participants—this session responds to a common tension in social movements: the tendency for radical ambitions for systemic change to be moderated over time. As movements seek legitimacy, funding, and partnerships with established institutions, they may soften critiques of dominant systems, including capitalism, and shift toward incremental reform. While these strategies can build short-term capacity and influence, they risk undermining the deeper structural transformations necessary to achieve food justice. The session will create an interactive space for participants to critically reflect on this tension and collectively explore strategies for maintaining radical visions while building sustainable movements. Through a combination of facilitated discussion circles, small-group breakout sessions, and collaborative activities—such as a “constellation board” where participants contribute ideas and experiences—attendees will engage in dialogue about the opportunities and constraints they face in their organizing work.
Poster Sessions
Public Fruit Trees: Models to Make City Fruit Succeed
Leah Bobet
A fruit tree is a generous neighbour: It can drink stormwater, sequester carbon, offer shade, house pollinators, build community‚Äîand help feed cities. Especially in cities, publicly accessible fruit trees are a tool worth enlisting in our food security and climate solutions. But even small shifts in local land use and food systems require pragmatic policy changes to be sustainable: bylaws, interdepartmental cooperation, and stable skill pathways all play a part in how well urban fruit trees succeed. Luckily, we don’t have to start from scratch. Cities in Canada and worldwide are developing a host of models for climate-friendly, public urban fruit trees: already-piloted, low-cost approaches we can adapt into quick, locally appropriate solutions. This poster compares multiple Canadian public fruit tree models and how cities make them work as we pivot our food systems toward better resilience. Based on community-based research conducted through Toronto Metropolitan University’s Food Security program–work which originated within Toronto’s grassroots food sovereignty communities of practice–it will offer prompts, options, and directions for cooperation that communities, organizers, municipalities, and non-profits can adapt to build more sustainable urban orchards.”
Bad Food or Good Waste? Small-Scale “Seed” Initiatives and the Governance of Food Loss and Waste in Montréal
Chloe Zinn, Dr. Karina Benessaiah, Dr. Kate Parizeau
Food loss and waste (FLW) has emerged as a significant wicked challenge constraining sustainable and just transformations of Canada’s food system. Despite growing policy and scholarly attention to food waste, existing governance responses have been fragmented, failing to address the scale and complexity of FLW across diverse spatial and governance contexts. Recent research has focused primarily on the roles of state institutions, consumer behaviour, and large non-governmental actors, leaving the contributions of small-scale and community-based initiatives comparatively underexamined. This paper explores how small-scale sustainability initiatives, conceptualized as “seeds” of transformation, contribute to the governance of food loss and waste. Framed by sustainability transitions and environmental governance scholarship, the study asks: how do seed initiatives shape FLW governance values, relationships and practices, and what leverage points do they offer for broader system change? Methodologically, the paper explores a mixed-methods case study of FLW initiatives in Montréal, Québec, combining semi-structured interviews, participant observation, and a comparative discourse analysis of seed mission statements and provincial FLW policies. Findings suggest that seed initiatives play distinct governance roles by reframing food waste as a social and relational issue, experimenting with alternative redistribution and valuation practices, and mediating between state, market, and community actors at local scales. While often operating at the margins of formal policy frameworks, these initiatives generate practices and narratives that challenge dominant socio-technical approaches to FLW. Focusing on place-based socio-ecological contexts and the relational roles of small-scale actors, this paper contributes to debates in geography on food systems governance, sustainability transformations, and multi-actor collaboration, and underscores the importance of recognizing and supporting grassroots initiatives as integral to equitable and effective FLW governance in the Canadian context.
Reconnecting Food, Community, and Land: Building Sustainable and Equitable Food Systems in the Upper Columbia
River Basin, Chloe Zinn, Dr. Karina Benessaiah, Dr. Kate Parizeau
Food loss and waste (FLW) has emerged as a significant wicked challenge constraining sustainable and just transformations of Canada’s food system. Despite growing policy and scholarly attention to food waste, existing governance responses have been fragmented, failing to address the scale and complexity of FLW across diverse spatial and governance contexts. Recent research has focused primarily on the roles of state institutions, consumer behaviour, and large non-governmental actors, leaving the contributions of small-scale and community-based initiatives comparatively underexamined. This paper explores how small-scale sustainability initiatives, conceptualized as “seeds” of transformation, contribute to the governance of food loss and waste. Framed by sustainability transitions and environmental governance scholarship, the study asks: how do seed initiatives shape FLW governance values, relationships and practices, and what leverage points do they offer for broader system change? Methodologically, the paper explores a mixed-methods case study of FLW initiatives in Montréal, Québec, combining semi-structured interviews, participant observation, and a comparative discourse analysis of seed mission statements and provincial FLW policies. Findings suggest that seed initiatives play distinct governance roles by reframing food waste as a social and relational issue, experimenting with alternative redistribution and valuation practices, and mediating between state, market, and community actors at local scales. While often operating at the margins of formal policy frameworks, these initiatives generate practices and narratives that challenge dominant socio-technical approaches to FLW. Focusing on place-based socio-ecological contexts and the relational roles of small-scale actors, this paper contributes to debates in geography on food systems governance, sustainability transformations, and multi-actor collaboration, and underscores the importance of recognizing and supporting grassroots initiatives as integral to equitable and effective FLW governance in the Canadian context.”
Reconnecting Food, Community, and Land: Building Sustainable and Equitable Food Systems in the Upper Columbia River Basin
Kaitlyn Adam
In this presentation, I explore the ways that the local food movement in the Upper Columbia River Basin (CRB) in Canada offers a holistic approach to addressing interconnected social and environmental challenges. I also analyze the synergies and partnerships between settler local food initiatives (LFIs) and Indigenous food sovereignty initiatives, exhibiting their potential to create new possibilities for reconciliation through collaboration and shared values. As part of this research, our team conducted 23 semi-structured interviews with leaders of various LFIs in the CRB paired with volunteer experience on several settler farms and on one Indigenous Syilx farm. My research has found that LFIs improve human and environmental health, foster a deeper connection to community, food, and nature, strengthen local food resilience, and enhance food literacy. Moreover, LFIs actively disrupt the dominant industrial food system, characterized by corporate concentration, food inequity, environmental degradation, and disconnection, by promoting practices that align closely with Indigenous worldviews of food systems as interconnected wholes. These initiatives use several approaches to disrupt the status quo, including relationship-building efforts, creating community gathering spaces and community-oriented business models, and pursuing organic/regenerative agriculture. As an example, one interview participant has created a farm ecosystem that integrates pollinators and native plants with food crops to demonstrate a holistic approach to cultivation. This LFI has also built relationships with local Indigenous communities to collaborate on various projects, partnered with nearby schools to enhance food literacy, and has piloted an equitable food model to feed their community. Ultimately, the local food movement connects people to the land and the relational nature of food, and LFIs, especially through partnership with Indigenous communities, can help us build an equitable, sustainable, and decolonial food future that supports community connection, food justice, and well-being for all.”
Supporting Indigenous Food Sovereignty Through Learning, and Understanding
Bridget King, Kathryn Rondina, Tarahum Ruhama, Jessica Love, Kim McGibbon
While definitions vary, Indigenous Food Sovereignty (IFS) consistently emphasizes strategies that honour Indigenous autonomy and traditional food practices. Within dietetics—and across health professions—colonialism has shaped teaching, research, and practice. To provide client centred care, health professionals require the knowledge and tools necessary to understand and uphold the principles of IFS. A recent NOSM University Dietetic Practicum Program project engaged two dietetic learners and Registered Dietitians from three Northern Ontario public health units to identify, assess, and recommend training tools that strengthen understanding of IFS. A structured review process was undertaken using established critical appraisal tools, including the JBI Critical Appraisal Tool for qualitative studies and the AACODS Checklist for grey literature. The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Quality Appraisal Tool was also used. During this process, the research team identified that existing appraisal tools do not adequately reflect Indigenous methodologies or relational approaches to knowledge. In response, and in consultation with an Indigenous Public Health Team, the team expanded the appraisal process by incorporating three additional questions. Input from the Nourishing Health Education Coalition further strengthened the review. The project resulted in a curated set of resources relevant to dietitians, dietetic learners, health professionals, and others interested in IFS. This presentation will highlight key findings, the recommended tools, and the importance of appraisal frameworks that honour Indigenous worldviews in advancing culturally safe, relational, and transformative nutrition practice. Members of the research team note their positionality as non-Indigenous.
Mapping, Yapping, and Bootstrapping: Understanding Food Sovereignty in Waterloo Region through Food Champions
Jie-Soo Park, Laine Young, Elisabeth Miltenburg, Devin Herman, Steffanie Scott, Andrew Spring
Community engagement and the co-creation of knowledge with leaders in the food space has historically been used in the food sovereignty research space as it aligns with the values of food sovereignty. Waterloo Region, one of the fastest growing municipalities in the country, has a long history of food system leadership and innovation, with the Food System Roundtable of Waterloo Region (FSRWR) playing a central role in education, networking, and policy advocacy. This presentation explores the author’s work with local food champions to co-create a vision for food sovereignty in Waterloo Region. Using a mixed methods approach and community-based, participatory action research, this project assesses participants at community workshops, semi-structured interviews, and participatory food asset mapping. The goal is to gather an in-depth understanding of food system champions’ current knowledge of the food system, their definition of food sovereignty, and their vision for the future of food in the Region. Despite growing literature on food sovereignty in Canada, mid-sized regions with urban-rural food systems are comparatively understudied in food sovereignty scholarship, which tends to focus on major metropolitan centres or remote communities. This presentation will discuss the methodology and highlight the preliminary results of this work. While the methods developed in this process are based on the context of Waterloo Region, they have larger research implications for building food sovereignty across disciplines and geographies.
Patient-centred care in social-ecological food systems, the ketogenic diet, and implications for equity and sustainability
Julia Russell Jozkow
Through this qualitative research I explore developing trends related to diet as a medical intervention from the perspective of ethics, equity, and sustainability. In particular, I focus on the implications of emerging evidence supporting the use of the ketogenic diet. While the general population may be most familiar with the ketogenic diet as a tool for weight loss, it is an evidence-based approach to the management of refractory epilepsy and has been use in the treatment of seizures for over 100 years. Now evidence is building within the scientific literature of the efficacy of ketogenic diets in the management of other brain-based conditions. Included among these are serious mental illnesses such as bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. At the same time that research is being conducted, people living with these conditions are also implementing ketogenic diets of their own accord and at times without medical supervision, which involves risk to the individual. Adopting a ketogenic diet necessitates a substantial change in dietary composition compared to a standard American diet. Furthermore, the typical formulation of a ketogenic diet is heavily oriented to animal products, although ketosis can be achieved through plant-based dietary patterns as well. When exploring the emergence of this trend through a food systems lens and a socioecological model we can see significant equity and sustainability considerations across scales radiating outwards from the individual patient. Current research in this area is primarily quantitative and has not yet sufficiently addressed patient perspectives. The underrepresentation of the perspectives of those living with serious mental illness has been identified as a gap within the scientific literature. An intervention, such as the ketogenic diet may offer opportunities for improved wellbeing yet we must interrogate the interconnections across novel treatment opportunities, patient-centred care, and the social-ecological conditions and food systems in which we live. “
The Question of Labour on Ecological Farms in Ontario
Alyssa Rush
Despite growing interest in sustainable agriculture, there is currently not much information on how ecological farmers meet their labour needs, and farm workers are often invisible in narratives around organic and healthy food. My PhD research therefore focuses on labour questions on ecological farms in Ontario. In my literature review, I overview how agriculture in Ontario is characterized by rising costs of land, an aging farming population, increasing farm debt, land concentration, and labour shortages. However, little research exists on labour issues on ecological farms in Ontario specifically. My research centres questions regarding the sourcing of labour on ecological farms, the utilization of that labour, and how these labour relations impact farmers and farm workers. Ultimately, I question to what extent labour constraints threaten the long-term sustainability of sustainable agriculture. I primarily use the analytical framework of Labour Studies, with some concepts and ideas also drawn from Feminist Political Ecology. To answer my research questions, I interviewed both farmers and farm workers and engaged in an extensive literature review. Based on my data, I argue that for ecological farms in Ontario to be both environmentally and socially sustainable, they must provide green jobs for workers that enable them to remain financially secure as well as mentally and physically healthy. I argue that under the current labour regimes in Ontario, ecological farms are often unable to provide these jobs due to grant restrictions for funding and the razor-thin profit margins made by selling organic or ecologically produced food. Therefore, policies must be put in place that support future generations of ecological farmers and farm workers. For food sovereignty to continue to grow in Canada, social sustainability must be prioritized alongside environmental sustainability. As it stands now, labour constraints significantly threaten the long-term sustainability of sustainable agriculture.”
Imagined Futures: Discourse and Policy in Canada’s National School Food Program
Mariia Kozlova
School food programs are internationally recognized as a means for promoting child health and improving educational outcomes. After the 2024 Federal Budget commitment to the implementation of a national school food program, Canada became the last G7 country to establish one. Yet, the current programming consists of a patchwork of different initiatives. The benefits of school food and the role of policy in shaping outcomes have been thoroughly examined. However, we know far less about the history of school food programs and how competing visions of school food have shaped the actual design and implementation of a national school food program. The main research question I focus on is: How have the values, risks, benefits, and goals of Canada’s National School Food Program evolved over time, between civil society advocacy starting in the 2000s and the 2025 funding agreement between the federal government and all the provinces and territories? Additionally, I review the role of non-governmental organizations in shaping the policy and focus on the current state of school food programming in British Columbia and Alberta. To investigate this question, I conducted a discourse analysis and thematic coding of documents, including bills, parliamentary discussions, advocacy reports, and regional implementation cases. The findings reveal that while civil society actors and some provinces envision school food as a universal right and form of public infrastructure, federal policy remains grounded in a narrower and more modest vision that prioritizes alleviating child food insecurity through low-cost interventions. The trajectory of the development of school food programs reflects not one consistent agenda, but a negotiated policy shaped by diverse actor-networks and embedded institutional logics. This gap between the ideal and the real-life implementation illustrates the value of viewing policy as a dynamic, multi-actor process rather than a linear progressive implementation.”
Future Harvest Partnership – supporting food production in the NWT
Andrew Spring, Julia Russell, Debora Van Nijnattan, Janet Dean
Future Harvest Partnership is a large multi-university project funded through the Sustainable Agriculture Research Initiative. It is a multi-year collaboration between Wilfrid Laurier University, the Territorial Agrifood Association and the Government of the Northwest Territories (NWT). Supported by an interdisciplinary team of leading academics from across North America, and informed by Indigenous Governments and traditional knowledge, the Partnership engages with food producers and local communities of the Northwest Territories to co-create research and generate useful insights for innovation and policy that can inform the development of a climate-resilient local food system.
This panel looks to provide updates and insights from the first year of the project, namely, to give an overview of the work and how it has been informed by past work and meets the needs of climate change in northern spaces. We will share results from a territorial-wide local food survey that helps us better understand who is growing food in the NWT, and what opportunities and berries exist to food production. We will also discuss how NetZero is being thought of in terms of food production and policy in the NWT, and how local food production offers a solution to meet NetZero goals. Finally, the panel will also discuss the tensions between partners in the complex nature of community-university partnerships. Managing expectations, engagement and communication of such a large-scale, important project has been rewarding and challenging as partners learn to build trust and work together.
Workshop - Tending the soil of community, propagating change
Val Steinmann, Michelle Holliday, Heather Thoma
To become better farmers, we have to become a better farming community. This is the premise of Erin Common Ground (ECG), a hundred or so farmers in central west Ontario, including a core group of local stewards who actively practice bringing their diverse community together in ways that grow learning, vitality and cohesion. “By fostering a vibrant, locally grounded community of practice,” a recent impact evaluation reports, “ECG provides farmers with critical social infrastructure—supporting their learning, well-being, and agricultural success. These relationships ripple outward: improving soil health and pest management, encouraging experimentation [on farms], and nurturing a culture of mutual aid.” This hasn’t happened by accident. It is the result of a dedicated practice of “tending the soil of community,” including a commitment to welcoming and integrating a diversity of agricultural approaches and perspectives. In this lively, experiential workshop, some of the core stewards from ECG will share stories and key patterns from the past decade of this work, including current efforts to propagate these practices within other Ontario communities.
Workshop - Corporate power versus migrant workers, farmers and consumers
Syed Hussan
2026 marks 60 years since Canada created the Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program, six decades of institutionalized “temporariness by design” that has spawned exploitative immigration regimes globally. Today, nearly 100,000 temporary foreign workers labour in Canadian agriculture, with tens of thousands more in food and beverage manufacturing and fisheries. They grow, harvest, process and deliver the food we eat while working on employer-tied and other restricted permits that trap them in poverty, facing verbal, physical, and sexual abuse, wage theft, unsafe conditions, and overcrowded housing. For six decades, both the abuse and the solutions – permanent status, open permits, enforceable housing standards, etc – have been documented. Instead of addressing this, migrants are being scapegoated for the housing and affordability crisis. The real culprit is concentrated corporate power. Canada’s agri-food sector generates $149 billion in GDP and lobbies harder than oil and gas. The same corporations that fight migrant worker rights squeeze billions from consumers: grocery profits doubled between 2019 and 2022 while food bank visits hit historic highs. They squeeze farmers too: net farm income fell 26% in 2024, and 40% of farm operators will retire by 2033 with no succession plan. Facilitated by Migrant Workers Alliance for Change (MWAC), a cross-Canada membership organization of migrants, this workshop aims to bring together the interests of migrants, small farmers and consumers. Participants will map the policy architecture sustaining migrant exploitation, examine how xenophobic narratives divide working people, identify leverage points, and build concrete actions to support migrant-led organizing, centering migrants not as a problem to manage but as essential partners in a just, equitable and affordable food system.
Presentations - Food system equity and agency
Food Affordability and Food Insecurity in Ontario: From evidence to effective action
Kim McGibbon, Lauren Kennedy
Household food insecurity (HFI) is a growing public health crisis in Ontario, driven primarily by inadequate incomes. Strong evidence demonstrates that income-based policy measures reduce HFI on a population level, yet food-based initiatives remain the predominant response.
Ontario Dietitians in Public Health (ODPH) supports public health units (PHUs) to monitor food affordability by comparing food and housing costs with household incomes to demonstrate that households living with low incomes do not have enough money for nutritious food and other costs of living.
This presentation will describe the connection between income and HFI, highlight intersecting systemic factors, and show how food affordability monitoring data are leveraged for knowledge translation and to advocate locally, provincially and federally for income-based solutions. We will discuss recommended interventions from ODPH’s position statements (2020), the provincial report on food insecurity and food affordability jointly produced with Public Health Ontario, and ODPH’s recently released Call-to-Action.
Consistent monitoring and reporting of food affordability in Ontario contributes to the evidence about HFI, and shifts the focus away from food-based responses which may provide temporary relief but do not address the root causes of HFI. Given the significant health consequences of HFI, and the magnitude of the problem in Ontario and across the country, it is essential to understand and support evidence-informed solutions to reduce HFI.
Du minimum nutritionnel à une alimentation décente : repenser le coût.
Jean-Philippe Laperrière
L’alimentation est souvent réduite à une question de nutrition ou de budget. Dans les débats sur la sécurité alimentaire, l’argumentaire se limite fréquemment aux ressources nécessaires pour couvrir les besoins caloriques minimaux ou à l’achat de biens jugés essentiels, notamment à travers la mesure du panier de consommation (MPC). Cette approche tend à appauvrir la compréhension de l’alimentation en la ramenant à une dépense strictement fonctionnelle. Afin de réintroduire la dimension sociale de l’alimentation, j’ai proposé en 2023 un nouvel indicateur : le budget alimentaire décent (Laperrière et Thériault, 2023). Issu d’une enquête exploratoire, cet indicateur vise à estimer le coût réel d’une alimentation de qualité, respectueuse des goûts, des cultures et des valeurs des ménages québécois. Il s’inscrit dans une approche ancrée dans les pratiques ordinaires de consommation, notamment par le suivi détaillé des achats d’une famille de la classe moyenne. Les résultats montrent que le budget alimentaire décent correspond à environ le double du montant minimal requis pour satisfaire les besoins caloriques ou couvrir les dépenses alimentaires de base définies par la MPC. Ils soulignent ainsi la nécessité d’accorder une place plus importante à l’alimentation dans le calcul des budgets, en particulier dans les débats sur les salaires, le salaire minimum et l’aide sociale. En considérant l’alimentation dans toute sa multidimensionnalité (Bricas, Conaré et Walser (dir.), 2021), cet indicateur offre un levier analytique et politique pertinent. Cette communication propose de revenir sur l’originalité de cette enquête, encore inédite dans un colloque scientifique, et d’en discuter la validité à la lumière de nouvelles données. Dans un contexte où de nombreux groupes communautaires revendiquent le droit à l’alimentation, cette perspective contribue à contester sa réduction à une dépense compressible.
Building a bigger anti-ableist table: The double bind of autism and food
Apama Raghu Menon
In 2025, West Virginia banned seven synthetic dyes from all food products after legislator Adam Burkhammer removed them from his foster children’s diets and reported behavioural improvements (CBS News, March 2025). Autistic people face confusing and harmful double standards around food. On the one hand, movements like “Make America Healthy Again” (MAHA) promote strict diets for health. On the other hand, autistic people have spent decades being told that special diets, such as removing gluten and casein, might “cure” or “fix” their autism. This creates a double bind: autistic people’s neurotype is blamed on what they eat, while their actual food choices are criticized as unhealthy. Both approaches share the same problematic assumption: that outside experts know better than autistic people about their own bodies and needs. When food movements frame dietary choices as moral issues, making people feel “good” or “bad” based on what they eat, it can be particularly harmful to neurodivergent individuals. This paper argues that we need to flip the script. Instead of imposing one-size-fits-all “healthy eating” rules, food security networks should respect autistic people’s knowledge of their own bodies. Diverse eating patterns and relationships with food are valid expressions of self-determination, not problems to be fixed. If we want to truly build a bigger table in Canadian food systems, we need to see neurodivergent food needs as central to food justice. Building a truly bigger table means recognizing neurodivergent food needs not as deficits requiring intervention, but as central considerations in creating equitable, accessible food systems that honour all bodies and minds.
Food as Medicine: Enhancing food sovereignty and promoting healthy aging for Indigenous older adults through culturally responsive food programming in long-term care homes
Joseph LeBlanc, Victoria Wicks, Sarah Funnell, Krystal Kehoe MacLeod
Background: Indigenous food sovereignty refers to the right of Indigenous communities to participate in all aspects of food systems, knowledges, and practices. Aging support programs, institutions, and healthcare services often fail to reflect Indigenous cultures and knowledge systems, hindering healthy aging. Guided by a strengths-based approach and in partnership with Indigenous communities, the Food as Medicine project examines how ancestral and culturally relevant foods support healthy aging for Indigenous long-term care home residents. Aim: This project promotes Indigenous food sovereignty in long-term care homes by developing an understanding of effective food sourcing, preparation, and service that are aligned with Indigenous cultures. We hope to share best practices that promote self-determination through engagement with traditional food practice and healthy aging. Methods: This project is guided by the Traditional Healing, Medicines, Foods, and Supports framework and governed by and co-produced with an Indigenous Advisory Circle. Sharing circles with Indigenous governance bodies in three partnered communities and a policy analysis of federal, provincial and Indigenous documents have been completed. These deliverables are being used to inform upcoming field work in three Indigenous-led long-term care homes. Together, this data will enrich the co-production of project outputs of relevance to Indigenous communities. Discussion: This project is building respectful and reciprocal partnerships among Indigenous and Indigenous-allied decision-makers, community members, Knowledge Keepers, researchers, clinicians, students, and long-term care residents to co-produce outputs that advance Indigenous food sovereignty and support healthy aging for Indigenous elders in long-term care.
Presentations - Community-based / participatory food system research methods
Farmer Engagement on the Farmer-led Research <–> Farmer-directed Research Spectrum
Rosie Kerr, Janet Dean, Andrew Spring
In an attempt to support evidence based-decision making for small scale ecological farmers who feel their interests are not served by current agricultural research, several organizations including the Ecological Farming Association of Ontario, the Organic Farming Research Foundation and the Territorial Agrifood Association have begun to address this problem by creating farmer-led research programs that support farmers in conducting trials on their own land to answer their on-farm questions. These programs often involve support from the organization for research capacity building, trial design, data analysis and reporting. In a parallel trend, agricultural scientists and extension programs are increasingly recognizing the need to make their research farmer-directed and community informed. Future Harvest Partnership brings together ag scientists and community led food systems social scientist to support farmer-led research, farmer-directed research and researcher-directed research in NWT. Recognizing the value in a spectrum of approaches that meet the needs of farmers, this paper explores on the ground dynamics (social, ecological, economic, policy environment) that influence where farmers engage with organizations and academics on a spectrum between farmer-led research and farmer-directed research. The paper will explore academic literature and reports on farmer-led research and farmer-directed research to better understand their similarities and differences. It will then share insights from the experiences of those involved in the Future Harvest Partnership, including practitioners, ag scientist, farmers, and social science researchers.
Bringing food education home with York Factory First Nation
Shirley Thompson
Food insecurity negatively impacts mental and physical health. Household food insecurity is the inability to feed your family culturally appropriate and sufficient healthy food because of having no food and no money to buy more food. A national survey in 2023 found 22.9% of Canadian households are food insecure, not including First Nation reserves. On First Nation reserves in Canada the rates more than double, according to a national study of reserves in 2019, finding 51% of household are moderate or severely food insecure. Working with York Factory First Nation we are bringing food education home to start a culinary arts program.
Podcasting for food systems change: Methodological reflections on an interdisciplinary, international project
Laine Young, Charlotte Spring, Evelyn Nimmo, Andrew Spring, Amanda Di Battista, Andres Kathunzi, Renata Kempf
Voicing Change was a project that produced a podcast of the same name, through a Community of Practice of researchers located in Kenya, Brazil, and Canada. A key aim was to develop a participatory methodology for coproducing podcasts with, by, and for communities and practitioners experiencing food system challenges, with a view to generating mutual learning about solutions and building networks for mutual support across our very different food system contexts. The project was grounded in the recognition that food system challenges are linked to unequal power relations and that communication affects how these challenges and potential solutions are identified, interpreted, and addressed. We reflect upon our methodological process and technical challenges including bridging different food system contexts, broaching language and terminological/disciplinary divides, navigating the accessibility of podcast tools and platforms in the Global South, institutional differences regarding academic expertise, and the technical, temporal, geographical, and economic accessibility of audio content recorded across continents. We reflect on our Community of Practice‚ conceptual discussions around the affordances and limitations of voice, deep listening, and aural/digital technologies as portals to report and confront food injustices. We probe the power dynamics at play in a collaborative project between a Global North/colonial university as the main funder, and universities in Brazil and Kenya with access to different kinds of knowledge and resources. We discuss the suitability and limitations of the podcast format as a tool for knowledge mobilization and discuss alternatives, including community radio and social media platforms.
Producer-level food rescue in rural Nova Scotia: A community-engaged behavioural science protocol
Mahasti Khakpour, Mel Jacques, Evan Wilson
The well-being of Canadians is increasingly threatened by high and rising rates of food insecurity, particularly in rural communities. At the same time, more than half of the food produced in Canada is wasted, representing roughly 25.7 million metric tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions and over 58 billion dollars in lost value. Food rescue initiatives that redirect surplus edible food to food-aid organizations offer a promising pathway to advance equity, sustainability, and a circular food economy, yet most food loss occurs before retail, at the producer and processing levels. Despite this, producers remain understudied actors in food rescue systems, and there is no transparent, community-engaged research for examining the facilitators and barriers that shape their participation. This presentation introduces a research protocol designed to study producer-level facilitators and barriers to food rescue in rural Nova Scotia. Developed in partnership with Second Harvest, Canada’s largest food rescue organization, the project combines community-based participatory action research with behavioural science to guide future empirical work on what enables or constrains producers’ engagement in food rescue. A central feature is an advisory committee of producers, community partners, food-aid organizations, and Second Harvest staff, which co-designs the study to ensure that methods and tools are grounded in real-world practice. The protocol specifies participatory mapping, qualitative interviews, and co-design Workshops, integrated with behavioural insights on norms, incentives, and perceived risks. Together, these components outline a transparent, transferable approach that can be applied in upcoming fieldwork and adapted in other contexts to strengthen producer-level food rescue.
FSC Education Session
A just transition roadmap for Canada’s food system
Faris Ahmed
This Workshop will address the opportunities, levers, barriers and tradeoffs in transitioning to a more just, higher welfare, sustainable and agroecological food systems in Canada. We will construct a ‘transition roadmap’ that centres equity and food sovereignty while exploring promising pathways, policies and practices (such as sustainable animal agriculture, local procurement, infrastructure and regional trade, school food programs, decent work and healthy diets). And we will anticipate the bumps along the road, and how to navigate them.
Film Screening - The Hand That Feeds Us
The Hands That Feed Us is a documentary feature film created by Devon Cooke that explores the romance and finance of farming, and all of the ups and downs of living and working on and off the land.
You can read more about it – including watching the trailer – here: https://thehandsthatfeedus.ca/.
Devon is on tour with his film for a year, hosting discussions and working to mobilize community knowledge into sustained action. Devon believes that localized engagement can rebuild trust, strengthen networks, and generate momentum toward a more resilient and equitable food system. Ultimately, the project positions community dialogue not as an endpoint, but as the foundation for long-term economic and social renewal in Canadian agriculture.