PROGRAM DETAILS
Wednesday, June 17, 2026
Today’s theme of Pruning focuses on streamlining sector tensions, finding points of collaboration, and identifying opportunities for further alignment that strengthen our food systems.
Join us as we reflect, refine our efforts, and make room for new growth.
Plenary - Food systems tensions, challenges, and how we work together
More information to come
Learning Experience - Rama Community Farm (off-site)
Come visit the greenhouse, new farm building, and fields to see how fresh produce supports food security in the community. Our community-based farm (https://www.ramacommunityfarm.com/) is owned and operated by the Chippewas of Rama First Nation, a proud and progressive community committed to nourishing its members and neighbours across Lake Country. The visit will include a talk about the history of agriculture in Rama, covering pre-colonial and colonial periods and its significance today. Please note that this is a working farm. Wear clothes that can get dirty and sturdy, appropriate footwear, as you may be invited to take part in light activities such as weeding. Seating is limited; visitors who require seating for accessibility reasons are encouraged to indicate this on the registration form. The session will include time for questions. It is open to practitioners, researchers, students, policymakers, and others interested in food security, food systems, and community equity.
Panel (CG) - People and land: From financialization to and tenure alternatives
Farm consolidation, farmland concentration, and financialization are on the rise in Canada thus leading to the increased growth of unsustainable large-scale agriculture at a time when reaching net-zero emissions in agriculture is crucial. Young farmers and new entrants into agriculture are leading the charge for an agroecological transition in food production, finding themselves struggling to gain secure tenure over farmland. This tension highlights the reality that how we relate to each other through the land determines who gets to decide how food is produced. Achieving food sovereignty and net-zero food production therefore requires critical consideration of how land is distributed and who has access to it and under what conditions. Farmland that is owned as an investment property results in radically different land use practices than communities that steward land for local food security. Questions of land tenure are also an essential factor in righting the wrongs of injustices, past and present. This roundtable draws on the expertise of academic and community researchers to discuss current political-economic conditions that produce land insecurity and draw on lessons from farming in remote Indigenous communities, alternative land tenure models, and land sharing initiatives across Canada. This discussion offers a critical appraisal of emerging possibilities for community-led land reform and new land relations as we organize for food sovereignty, sustainability, equity, and justice.
Presentations - How we land: Racialized gardeners negotiating settler identities and treaty responsibilities
Martha Stiegman, Melina Ghasem-Asad, Anna Hao Long
Working towards Food Justice on Turtle Island necessarily involves confronting settler colonialism, the dispossession of Indigenous peoples from their ancestral homelands, and supporting their continued assertions of jurisdiction through Indigenous Food Sovereignty movements. This work of allyship takes many forms, from learning about treaty responsibilities to directly supporting Land Back efforts. It also entails taking cues from Indigenous legal traditions and knowledge systems about how to live in right relations with the more-than-human world, or ‘all our relations’. Most treaty scholarship centers a taken for granted White settler / Indigenous binary. But Black people and people of color whose participation in Canadian society is mediated by White supremacy, have unique relationships to treaties that were negotiated by the British Crown – many of whom have first-hand experience of European colonialism in their own home contexts. For many racialized gardeners, taking up treaty responsibilities involves looking to their own traditions to find culturally grounded ways to challenge Western capitalist instrumentalization of nature and build relationships of allyship with Indigenous peoples. Back to program schedule
Panel - The good, the bad, and the ugly of complex collaborations: Reflecting on the challenges and opportunities of international, interdisciplinary, community-engaged partnerships
Erin Nelson, Baran Karsak, Natalia Ruiz, Chi Vi, Allison Young
In this panel, a food systems research cluster based in the University of Guelph’s Department of Sociology and Anthropology will share insights from multiple complex collaborative projects involving academics and community partners. We will focus on projects that include some combination of international, intercultural, and/or interdisciplinary elements, specifically: OMAFRA-funded soil health research in Ontario; IDRC-funded research on advancing gender equity in agricultural sciences in Cuba and across Latin America; NSERC-funded research on supporting sustainable food systems development in Canada’s Northwest Territories; SSHRC-funded research on agroecological transitions in Mexico; and graduate student research that takes a One Health perspective on ecological farming.
Our aim is to discuss some of the impacts these collaborations can achieve and also have some honest conversation about how and why they may sometimes fall short of their aspirations. Questions we will reflect upon include: What is required for collaboration across social and natural sciences to be effective? How can work funded and administered by Canadian agencies and institutions support decolonial principles and practices? What do we do when the relationships that underpin complex collaborations hit road bumps or break down? We will also touch on the longstanding question of how the sometimes differing priorities of research and practice can be balanced. Throughout the panel, we will highlight the particular ways in which the challenges and opportunities of complex collaborations play out for graduate students and junior scholars committed to decolonial, transformative, participatory approaches to research.
Presentations - Campus food systems
Campus food initiatives: Findings from a national research project
Michael Jodah
Student-run campus food initiatives have emerged as critical sites of community engagement, food literacy development, and localized food system transformation within post-secondary institutions. This paper presents findings from a national research project examining the scope, structure, and impact of student-run campus food initiatives across Canada, with particular focus on community gardens, farmers’ markets, cafés, and food centres. Drawing on a mixed-methods design—including surveys and interviews—the research analyzes organizational models, funding mechanisms, governance structures, and outcomes across diverse geographic and institutional contexts. Findings indicate that student-run campus food initiatives serve multifunctional roles: enhancing food security, fostering experiential learning, strengthening campus–community partnerships, and advancing sustainability objectives. These initiatives contribute to place-based food literacy and local food procurement, while playing an increasingly central role in addressing student food insecurity through low-barrier access models and dignity-based service provision.
Despite demonstrated social, educational, and environmental benefits, initiatives face persistent challenges related to funding precarity, securing long-term space, volunteer burnout, and limited institutional integration. The study identifies enabling conditions for long-term viability, including formal institutional recognition, diversified revenue streams, student leadership continuity mechanisms, and alignment with campus sustainability and equity strategies. By mapping the contemporary landscape of student-run food initiatives in Canada, this research contributes to food systems scholarship and offers policy-relevant insights for institutional leaders seeking to strengthen equitable and resilient campus food environments.
How food secure are our students? Updated evidence to inform campus action
Yukari Seko
Food insecurity among postsecondary students remains a persistent public health concern in Canada and internationally. Among this population, food insecurity is strongly associated with nutritional inadequacies, heightened stress, behavioural and emotional challenges, and poorer academic outcomes. A 2015 multi-campus Canadian study found that 39% of students at Toronto Metropolitan University (TMU; Ryerson University at the time) experienced moderate or severe food insecurity. However, no subsequent studies have been published in the past decade, despite substantial changes in the postsecondary context such as rising living costs and post-pandemic financial strain.
We conducted a secondary analysis of 2024 data from the National College Health Assessment (NCHA; n=1255) and the Canadian Campus Wellbeing Survey (CCWS; n=920) completed by TMU students. The study objectives were to: 1) assess the current prevalence of food security among TMU students; and 2) identify demographic and contextual factors associated with food insecurity. Food security status in both surveys was measured using the 6-item short form of the Household Food Security Survey Module (HFSSM). Multivariable logistic regression models were fitted to each dataset to estimate associations between student characteristics and the odds of experiencing food insecurity.
Overall, 34.4% of students experienced some degree of food insecurity over a 12-month period. Using a 30-day reference period, NCHA showed that food insecurity prevalence rose up to 51.5% during September-October. Financial stress, financial pressure related to work obligations, and not living with parents or guardians were significantly associated with food insecurity. These findings indicate that food insecurity remains widespread among TMU students and may be particularly serious at the beginning of the academic year. In response, we emphasize the importance of coordinated campus interventions and introduce emerging efforts that leverage student expertise and community stakeholder partnerships to address food insecurity at TMU.
We conducted a secondary analysis of 2024 data from the National College Health Assessment (NCHA; n=1255) and the Canadian Campus Wellbeing Survey (CCWS; n=920) completed by TMU students. The study objectives were to: 1) assess the current prevalence of food security among TMU students; and 2) identify demographic and contextual factors associated with food insecurity. Food security status in both surveys was measured using the 6-item short form of the Household Food Security Survey Module (HFSSM). Multivariable logistic regression models were fitted to each dataset to estimate associations between student characteristics and the odds of experiencing food insecurity.
Overall, 34.4% of students experienced some degree of food insecurity over a 12-month period. Using a 30-day reference period, NCHA showed that food insecurity prevalence rose up to 51.5% during September-October. Financial stress, financial pressure related to work obligations, and not living with parents or guardians were significantly associated with food insecurity. These findings indicate that food insecurity remains widespread among TMU students and may be particularly serious at the beginning of the academic year. In response, we emphasize the importance of coordinated campus interventions and introduce emerging efforts that leverage student expertise and community stakeholder partnerships to address food insecurity at TMU.
Food, finances, and the campus foodscape: Graduate and undergraduate student perspectives
Sara Clarke
On Canadian post-secondary campuses, the everyday act of finding food teaches students about socioeconomics, belonging, and worth. Drawing on a mixed-methods case study at a large research-intensive University, I explore how graduate and undergraduate students perceive and navigate their on-campus foodscapes. A campus-wide survey and semi-structured interviews reveal that these groups experience their campus foodscape in markedly different ways, shaped by institutional food provisioning, meal plan rules, and differential access to campus spaces. Graduate students regularly describe access to lounges featuring kitchen(ette)s and invitations to staff and faculty events that include food, while undergraduates are more reliant on formal student-facing outlets perceived as higher-priced or poorly aligned with student schedules and preferences. Financial patterns mirror these divergences. Undergraduates are more likely to report parental contributions for tuition and food, and a greater ability to stay within budgets. Graduate students assemble funding packages, assistantships and other income, yet report increased difficulty remaining within budgets. Across groups, students prioritize affordability tactics, including weekly sales and price reductions, over acceptability attributes, revealing a misalignment between institutional offerings and lived budgeting experiences amid rising costs and mounting student debt.
Framed through foodscape analysis and fundamental cause theory, campus food systems emerge as informal pedagogical spaces that normalize hierarchies and differential deservingness. I conclude with practical and equity-oriented interventions, including universal access to on-campus kitchen amenities, affordability embedded in campus dining, and participatory justice-focused contracting. These steps would help better align campus foodscapes with student well-being and contribute to broader food system transformations.
Mapping food security on campus: Geomapping local food access at Trent University
Emi Habel
Campus food supports can exist in plain sight—and still be functionally inaccessible when students lack clear, low-barrier ways to locate and navigate them. This presentation introduces a practical, replicable approach to strengthening campus food security through geomapping, locality knowledge, and accessible wayfinding design. Drawing on a student-led placement project at Trent University, developed in partnership with Trent Vegetable Gardens (TVG) and the Seasoned Spoon Café, I present a redesigned Symons Campus Food Map as a case study in visual infrastructure for food access. While existing food maps often prioritize comprehensiveness, they can unintentionally create barriers through visual complexity and cognitive overload.
In response, this project reorients mapping toward usability and access. The redesigned map is guided by three core principles: (1) an aerial campus perspective to support intuitive spatial orientation, (2) minimal, high-impact text to improve accessibility and reduce overwhelm, and (3) clearly marked landmarks with numbered reference points that connect users directly to specific food initiatives. Using aerial imagery and campus cartography, the map traces key routes and sites while maintaining visual clarity.
The final design highlights ten food-related locations, including community gardens, kitchens, a food pantry, an apiary, and a market garden. By framing locality knowledge as an access issue rather than solely an educational one, this work positions mapping as a form of intervention. It demonstrates how thoughtfully designed visual tools can reduce barriers to engagement, increase awareness of campus food systems, and support more dignified, autonomous access to food resources. This approach offers a scalable model for campuses seeking to strengthen food security through low-cost, student-driven design.
CAFS strategic planning - From insight to action: Advancing CAFS’ strategic priorities through collective deliberation
Diana Chu, Dr. Erik Chevrier, Finn Meyer Cook, Alexandra Otis
This interactive session aims to strengthen the Canadian Association for Food Studies (CAFS) strategic direction while deepening connections across Canada’s food studies, food systems, and food justice communities. Building on CAFS Spring 2026 current state assessment, the Workshop aims to bring together researchers, practitioners, activists, farmers, fisherfolk, Indigenous rights holders, students, community-based food practitioners, policy-engaged participants and others. Together, participants will engage with key ideas emerging from member surveys, interviews, and a recent world café, and contribute to a shared sense-making process. The focus is on surfacing common priorities, naming tensions that need attention, and shaping concrete directions that can inform future potential action, collaboration, research and engagement. Through facilitated small-group discussions, participants will explore key themes grounded in lived experience, while discussing practical questions about feasibility and what can meaningfully be carried forward in real-world food systems work. Members from CAFS, Common Ground Network, Food Secure Canada, and Food Communities Network are welcome to participate in this session.
Workshop - Senses and making sense: Documenting culinary memories through participatory art-based method
Jingshu Yao
The workshop will explore art-based research (ABR) and participatory methods in capturing sensory memories for storytelling about food. The methods emerged from my previous research projects ‘North York Recipes for Healing'(2023) and ‘Leftover Ingredients’ (2025), which focus on the food heritage of immigrant communities in Toronto. The workshop invites scholars, practitioners, and community organizers to explore ways to engage the public in food-related initiatives by prioritizing sensory memories and embodied knowledge.
Panel - To sustain: Urban and periurban agriculture as part of a zero-emissions food system
Sarah Elton, Ryan Isakson, Michael Classens, 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)
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).
Presentations - Feminist and intersectional perspectives
Cultivating Care: Women-led Pathways to Transnational Urban Food Sovereignty Geetha Sukumaran
This research paper will examine gendered mobilizations of food sovereignty within cross-continental urban ecologies of inequality. Women in cities and towns across continents bear a major responsibility of feeding families and communities and are also the worst affected by climate crisis and rising food costs. In response, many seek to rebuild local food sovereignty and nutritional security for their families and communities through collaborative efforts. The study will explore the role of grassroots female-led networks, the Ubuntu Collective in Downsview Park, Toronto, as well as The Seed Island in Chennai, Southern India. Food sovereignty strategies‚ including climate-resistant crop cultivation, diversification of food sources, improving local food networks, and increasing soil health‚ provide pathways for communities to achieve food security while navigating structural barriers. The Ubuntu Collective in Toronto’s Downsview Park addresses urban food insecurity through community-supported agriculture programs for low-income & Black households. In Chennai, the Seed Island intervenes through home gardening and food literacy to confront similar challenges. These two women-led urban models use feminist organizing and traditional knowledge to address racialized, oppressive, caste-based, gender barriers in accessing nutritional security and resources. Since these contexts are analogous and therefore comparable, the paper explores the possibility of a comparative framework that links female-led initiatives across continents and support the formation of transnational networks that can advance local food sovereignty.
Minwanjigewin: Towards Food Sustainability Among the Williams Treaties First Nations
Teresa Copeland, Kerry Ann Charles
Minwanjigewin (an Ojibway word meaning “to eat something that tastes good and is good for you”) is a collaborative project with communities of the Williams Treaties First Nations. We worked within the Rama First Nation to map existing food and health-related programs, services, and champions in the community to inform an inventory of community food system strengths. The benefits include a better understanding of existing programming and opportunities to improve food access, promote healthy eating, and revitalize traditional food-acquisition practices, informed by community input. Additionally, the community-led process of mapping community strengths and sharing findings at a gathering helped support relationship building within and between the Williams Treaties First Nations to inform planning for a Williams Treaties Food Hub. The intended long-term impacts include steps towards greater food sovereignty and food security for Williams Treaties First Nations.
From Seeds to Systems: Feminist Agroecology and Relational Practices in Western Prairie Foodways
Chelsea Rozanski
This paper examines seed saving as a feminist agrarian praxis among regenerative farmers in Alberta, Canada. Drawing from multi-sited ethnographic research—including peri-urban farms, urban farm businesses, and grower activist collectives—I explore how seed saving functions as a relational foodway that fosters intergenerational knowledge exchange, care-based labour, and ecological stewardship. These practices challenge industrial, extractive, and commodified agricultural models while building networks of reciprocity and solidarity across human and more-than-human communities. By situating regenerative agriculture within feminist political ecology and food sovereignty scholarship, I highlight how farmers navigate land access, labour allocation, and seed governance to sustain diverse and resilient food systems. This study underscores the social and ecological significance of relational practices in transforming food systems and creating equitable opportunities for participation. Insights from this work contribute to critical discussions on collaborative food policy, community-based stewardship, and the cultivation of just, place-based food systems in Canada.
Applying Intersectionality to Food Systems Research: Evidence from Urban Agriculture in Quito, Ecuador
Laine Young, Alison Blay-Palmer, Alice Hovorka, Sean Doherty, Emma Sharp
Food systems research increasingly engages questions of equity, justice, and inclusion. Analytical frameworks capable of examining how multiple, intersecting power relations shape food system experiences and outcomes can add complexity to these analyses. Intersectionality offers a promising approach but remains under-utilized in food systems scholarship. This presentation advances intersectionality as a conceptual and methodological framework for food systems research, using urban agriculture in Quito, Ecuador as a case study. The research draws on a qualitative analysis of AGRUPAR, a municipally led, participatory urban agriculture program in Quito that is internationally recognized for promoting women‚ empowerment, agroecology, traditional knowledges, and livelihoods among populations experiencing structural poverty. Intersectionality is mobilized to examine how food system participation is shaped by intersecting social locations, identities, and systems of oppression, and foregrounds how power relations can be obscured in traditional urban agriculture research. The analytical framework operationalizes intersectionality through a multi-level lens attentive to power, diverse knowledges, intersecting social categories, reflexivity, time and space, resistance, resilience, and social justice. Drawing on in-depth interviews with program participants as well as municipal policy analysis, this case study centers lived experiences to reveal how urban agriculture functions not only as a food security and livelihood strategy, but also as a site of knowledge production, governance, and political agency within Quito‚ food system. The case demonstrates how intersectional analysis enables a more holistic understanding of food systems and how it could be advanced in future research.
Workshop - Exploring a local chapter model for CAFS: Building place-based food systems communities
Amanda Shankland, Diana Chu, Alissa Overend
As an interdisciplinary association committed to advancing research, teaching, and public engagement on food systems issues, CAFS is uniquely positioned to convene scholars, practitioners, and community partners. Recent strategic planning activities, including member surveys and discussions at last year’s CAFS conference, have highlighted a strong desire for more regular, place-based opportunities to connect beyond the annual conference.
In response, this workshop invites participants to explore the potential of a local chapter model to strengthen member engagement, increase visibility, and foster collaboration among diverse food systems actors. Led by Local Greater Toronto Area (GTA) chapter co-organizers Diana Chu and Dr. Amanda Shankland, and Edmonton chapter organizer Dr. Alissa Overend, the workshop will create an immersive space for participants to explore what they would like to experience through these local chapter events. Drawing on preliminary findings from the strategic planning process, informal member conversations, and two pilot programs currently being developed in the GTA and Edmonton, the session will explore what local chapter engagement might look like and how these events can advance CAFS’s broader values and goals.
Participants will be invited to reflect on key questions, including: What types of experiences would you like to have while attending these types of events? What purposes should local chapters serve? What principles should guide locally led and context-specific initiatives? How can events and initiatives be inclusive and justice-oriented? How might success be measured, and what role could the Board play in supporting pilot efforts? Through an immersive experience and facilitated discussion, the workshop aims to gather input from a broad cross-section of CAFS, the Common Ground Network, Food Secure Canada and Food Communities Network members, including academics, students, and non-academic food systems practitioners. Outcomes will include a clearer articulation of shared goals, potential pilot pathways, and next steps for advancing a local chapter model that is responsive, inclusive, and sustainable. Ultimately, the workshop aims to strengthen the role of CAFS through year-round, community-driven, place-based networks.
Presentations - Community-based programs: Challenges and opportunities
Why our work keeps breaking: Navigating the fast/stable/dense triad in food systems organizations
Matt Johnstone
Justice-oriented organizations in the food sector are being asked to do more than ever‚ often under conditions of urgency, scarcity, and deep moral responsibility. Yet, even where values are clear and leadership is capable, this work repeatedly breaks: burnout, governance strain, program collapse. Conventional management models treat these as execution failures. The Fast/Stable/Dense (FSD) framework suggests they’re predictable results of unresolved structural tensions. The FSD model is an alternative management framework that identifies three system-orienting forces‚ Fast (responsiveness), Stable (reliability), and Dense (values-driven complexity)‚ that shape an organization‚ operational constraints and that can support generative tension. For instance, unlike efficiency-oriented management frameworks that treat complexity as friction, FSD recognizes Density as a necessary feature of justice work, reflecting overlapping obligations including values-driven commitments such as to equity and lived experience. While density generates legitimacy and impact, it also introduces structural costs that must be managed intentionally.
Organizations can reliably optimize only two forces simultaneously, and when they do, the resulting tension is productive. But the third unoptimized force, referred to as the shadow, accumulates as a debt that must eventually be paid.
Growth (Fast/Stable): Controlled momentum; Shadow: shallow values alignment
Plateau (Stable/Dense): Consolidated complex systems; Shadow: operational slowdown
Scale (Fast/Dense): Rapid mission expansion; Shadow: inadequate systems
This presentation will introduce FSD as a strategic discipline for decision-making. We will examine pitfalls‚ predictable, systemic failure modes like ‘Stall’ or ‘Decay’‚ that occur when trade-offs remain implicit, and define density, not as a friction to be avoided, but as a necessary feature of the work. By surfacing these tensions, FSD offers food systems practitioners a way to identify trade-offs explicitly, offering permission to make strategic choices about pace and sustainability that are aligned both with mission and the complex social relations food systems transformation requires.
Integrating community food programs into housing: Learning from experiences in Ottawa and Toronto
Arianna Fuke
Despite persistent food insecurity in cities across Canada, food access remains an under-considered dimension of the social outcomes tied to housing. The absence of food in housing policy/planning signifies a gap between food access and many renters’ lived economic realities. This research asks what role integrating community food programs (CFPs) directly into the infrastructure of housing developments might play, to strengthen food access and address renters’ experiences of urban precarity. CFPs can take the form of community gardens, distribution programs, community kitchens etc. Embedding these strategies on-site offers a unique opportunity to centre food access in housing, particularly as the federal government’s Housing Strategy continues to evolve, and as municipalities and developers respond in turn. To understand the implications and feasibility of on-site CFPs, I examine examples in Ottawa and Toronto. Qualitative findings come from interviews with employees at private and not-for-profit housing developers, as well as tenants engaged in on-site CFPs. A document analysis of developers’ and municipalities’ strategic directions also gives context to the way that food is conceptualized in housing planning and policy. Results reinforce that CFPs (on-site or otherwise) are not a complete solution to food insecurity or economic precarity. However, findings also reveal that embedded food programs can be an important emergency fallback for residents, and a vehicle for community connection and capacity building. For developers, including CFPs on site can act as a value-add, from a marketing and a community building perspective, but their inclusion can come with myriad logistical barriers and financial pressures. An increased awareness of the benefits and tensions of on-site CFPs could bring discussions of food access and food equity more definitively into the housing conversation, and further a holistic housing approach across levels of government.
Coalitions of care: Building an anti-competitive ecosystem of community food partners Lucy Hinton
This paper draws on primary research to examine relationship-building among community food organizations and its effects on the food system in London, Ontario. Grounded in collaborative research with Urban Roots, a non-profit urban agriculture organization that distributes a significant proportion of its produce free of charge, the chapter explores how community food groups in the city cultivate partnerships and caring collaborations. This ethos of care is particularly salient in a context marked by asymmetries of organizational size and power, a municipal environment that is not always conducive to food systems work, and a competitive landscape for limited city grant funding. Urban Roots both builds and mobilizes partnerships to inform its strategic direction, to consolidate its position as a politics-forward organization, and to enact the values of care at the core of its mission. The paper argues that community food systems planning must attend to the relational dynamics among community food organizations with differing roles, capacities, and values in order to establish a robust foundation for critical food security.
Revitalizing the food forest at GreenUp’s ecology park
Emi Habel
In this presentation, I share a community-based case study from my placement at GreenUp’s Ecology Park in Peterborough/Nogojiwanong, where I supported the next phase of a food forest as a response to local food insecurity—offering free, low-barrier access to fresh food alongside opportunities for informal, place-based learning. Designed as both a food source and a knowledge-sharing space, the site invites park visitors to engage with how food is grown, harvested, and cared for. Originally established in 2014, the food forest’s initial location proved too shaded to sustain productive fruit tree and shrub growth. In response, I conducted a site assessment and advanced a relocation plan to a sunnier, underused area of the park. A healthy young pawpaw (Asimina triloba)—a culturally significant native fruit tree—was already established in this space and became a living anchor for an experimental garden that can evolve into a renewed food forest. To explore layered planting while centering food sovereignty-informed values such as reciprocity, care, and shared nourishment, I implemented low-barrier, soil-building methods, including sheet mulching and composting, and trialed a small, highly visible polyculture. This planting drew inspiration from Three Sisters teachings, adapted to the scope of the placement: squash as ground cover and beans as a vertical layer, supported by companion species to enhance soil health and reduce pest pressure. I share early-season observations, including successes, challenges, and key adaptations, and outline recommendations for ongoing monitoring, expansion, and community-facing education. I conclude by positioning the Ecology Park food forest as a replicable model for urban food security infrastructure—one that integrates food access with public education, strengthens relationships to local land and native species, and fosters ongoing collaboration with Indigenous knowledge holders and community partners.
Wrap-Around Support Initiatives at the Ottawa Food Bank
Michaela Tokarski, Shannon Szkurhan
Between 2019 and 2025, the Ottawa Food Bank (OFB)’s member agencies saw a staggering 101% increase in visits. Over that same period, the OFB piloted Wrap-Around Support Initiatives (WASI) at 6 community health and resource centers, supporting 13 food banks, with the goal of reducing reliance on emergency food supports. The WASI support services offered included assistance accessing direct financial benefits (ODSP, OW, CCTB, energy rebates), programs which provide material goods (furniture, computers, backpacks, snowsuits), immigrant settlement organizations, employment services, healthcare, mental health supports, short-term counselling, childcare, programming for children, transportation, language, legal aid, and housing supports. Many have benefited from the OFB’s WASI pilot projects, including those who reduced their need for a food bank or whose visits to the food bank were less urgent, those who felt more connected to their communities, those who felt better equipped to face daily challenges, and those who received assistance accessing financial supports. Over 80% of those surveyed after one of the pilot programs had accessed new supports or benefits that they were not aware they were eligible to receive, and 74% were more aware of the resources and supports available to them going forward. This presentation includes a grounding in Wrap-Around Support Initiatives, including how the OFB pilots were initially structured, the initial theory of change and logic models, and then outlines the structure of the next phase of OFB WASI based on the learnings from the first 7 years. Lastly, the presentation explores the complexities of assessing the progress of such initiatives and the OFB’s plan for doing so.
Presentations - Critical food pedagogy and food justice movements (Part 1)
Critical Food Pedagogy and Food Justice Movements
Michael Classens, Kihan Yoon-Henderson
In response to both the inadequacy of conventional food systems education, and the urgency of attending to the global polycrisis including the climate crisis, biodiversity collapse, geopolitical instability, and ongoing structural violence and oppression, critical food systems scholars have developed a range of approaches that centre questions of power and injustice. This constitutes an explicitly political choice to engage with pedagogy in ways that are meant to transform the food system. Recent scholarly interventions gesture towards a critical food systems pedagogy praxis within which theorizing socioecological justice and equity within food systems directly informs movements for food systems transformation, both on campus and beyond it. Papers in these special sessions by students, practitioners, activists, and scholars explore how pedagogy is deployed on campus, and beyond, in service of advancing the varied objectives of food justice movements, broadly conceived. The specific focus of the papers includes, though is not limited to: (radical) innovations in critical food systems pedagogy; beyond-campus solidarities and community-campus partnerships; innovations in community-based food pedagogies; the contributions of food pedagogy in the context of local food governance; and the (shifting) parameters of food pedagogy in the context of geopolitical instability and climate collapse
The pedagogical potential of prefiguration: How and what food change agents learn
Rebecca Laycock Pedersen
Many sustainability- and justice-oriented food initiatives seek to enact change in ways that reflect the futures they aim to create, rather than relying on the logic that ‘the end justifies the means.’ Such efforts are commonly conceptualised as prefigurative. Prefigurative practices are rich with pedagogical potential, enabling people to re-imagine alternative social and economic arrangements while supporting peer-to-peer learning and re-skilling. However, there has been limited empirical investigation into what change agents learn through these processes. I therefore examined learning across different prefigurative practices, drawing on interviews with change agents involved in food initiatives in Calgary, Canada, and Malm√∂, Sweden. Using a typology of prefigurative processes alongside a sustainability competencies framework, I will present which forms of prefiguration are associated with the development of particular sustainability competencies
From Microwaves to Kitchens: Culinary Infrastructure and Critical Food Literacy on Campus
Stephanie Chartrand, Mike Lawler
This paper examines how culinary infrastructure shapes the development of critical food literacy on university campuses. Drawing on a case study of the University of Toronto Food Coalition, we analyze a year-long effort to establish a student-run free meal program amid rising food insecurity and limited access to functional kitchen spaces. We argue that the absence of publicly accessible culinary infrastructure constrains experiential, community-based food learning and reinforces transactional models of campus food provisioning. Conversely, access to kitchens enables the development of critical food literacy through embodied practices of food preparation, collective procurement, and shared meals, fostering socioecological understanding, social networks, and capacities for advocacy. Situating our analysis within critical food literacy scholarship, we demonstrate how kitchens function as material conditions that shape whether students can meaningfully engage with, learn from, and intervene in campus food systems.
Radically Reimagining Responsibility of the Higher Education Classroom
Leanne De Souza-Kenney
Food systems represent complex, trans-disciplinary, sociocultural, and geopolitical constructs that are barely sustained under unprecedented, dynamic pressures. The classroom remains the most radical space of possibility in the academy (Hooks, 1994), while the banking system of education (Freire, 1970) is all but dangerous in classrooms that focus on understanding food systems, especially when the campuses that host these classrooms, the communities our students belong to, and our students themselves, suffer solvable social conditions like food insecurity. We are at a critical inflection point that demands radically reimagining the responsibility of universities in communities. Both critical consciousness and meaningful praxis must be mobilized to foster learning that aligns with action beyond the classroom, to build agency among students and the communities to which they belong. Student and community partnerships offer a tangible pedagogical praxis to co-design and co-create with radical empathy and responsibility by leveraging curriculum, resources, and learning outcomes.
Food literacy as critical food pedagogy: Teaching and learning within and beyond food justice
Jennifer Sumner
If we understand pedagogy as involving processes of teaching and learning, then the development of food literacy within and beyond food justice movements is a form of critical food pedagogy. This is particularly true of critical food literacy, defined as: a set of skills, knowledge, and understandings that (1) equip individuals to plan, manage, prepare, and eat food that is healthy, culturally appropriate, and sustainable, while (2) enabling them to understand the broader sociopolitical and ecological dynamics of the food system, and (3) empowering them to incite socioecological change within the food system (Classens and Sytsma, 2020, p. 10). This presentation will outline how critical food literacy has been used on campus and in communities to advance the objectives of food justice movements and promote food systems transformation.
Panel (CG) - Bridging the rural-urban divide: The potential of food hubs and food distribution Infrastructures for system transformation
This session brings together members of the Common Ground Network’s Rural-Urban Pillar in dialogue with six panellists from across rural and urban Canada. We will enjoy an interactive session bringing together disparate experiences, perspectives, organizations and contexts to find common ground in relation to emerging food infrastructure challenges, necessary to support just, sustainable and healthy food systems. Panellists’ contributions range from documenting experiences in coordinating food hubs and novel northern food supply chains in British Columbia, Ontario, and Newfoundland and Labrador; to critically evaluating the challenges facing large urban food banks; exploring opportunities arising for new food distribution constellations through the new national school food program, and developing insights from research reflecting on critical gaps preventing the scaling of local and ecological farmers and alternative food networks. Participants are invited to join a continuing dialogue to facilitate the cross-sectoral collaboration necessary to address chronic resource limitations and build a more integrated food system.
The potential of school food for food system transformation Carolyn Webb, Heather Thoma
Counterhegemonic Infrastructure for Food Systems Change Bryan Dale
Justice at the cash register: how selling food can be part of the food movement Sarah Crocker, Joshua Smee
Community adaptation to major food bank cuts Michaela Tokarski
Coordinating the North: Value Chain Governance for Local Food Procurement in Northern Ontario Genevieve Sartor
Grow & Connect: Supporting Coordination and Collaboration in Regional Food Systems Damon Chouinard
Presentations - Food school report
More information to come.
Presentations - Explorations in food system technology advances
Canadian public’s perceptions of cellular agriculture and agri-food futures
Sarah-Louise Ruder, Rob Newell, Jofri Issac
This presentation will outline the results of a 2025 survey on cellular agriculture and food systems transitions, with a representative sample of the Canadian public (n=5,166). We recorded both general perceptions and acceptance of cellular agriculture as well as responses to three different potential products: cellular agriculture salmon fillet, nuggets with cellular agriculture chicken, and ice cream with precision fermentation dairy. In addition to the common variables in consumer research on novel foods (e.g., willingness to try/buy), our survey explores perceptions and attitudes on broader food system transformation and visions of food futures. Applying this lens to community and societal interest in cellular agriculture is important for comprehensively understanding the support (or lack thereof) for an emerging cellular agriculture as an industry and its impact on local and global food systems. Climate change urgency and environmental values were strongly significant predictors of cellular agriculture acceptance. There were also significant results for the effect of socio-demographic variables and eating habits. We are now using the results from our quantitative survey analysis to develop a Q-method study with government and policy staff in Canada to support transitions to more just and sustainable food systems.
Cultivating community food sovereignty in controlled environment agriculture: A scoping review
Luca Galler
Controlled Environment Agriculture (CEA) units are increasingly being promoted as a component of the overall response to food security challenges in northern and remote regions of Canada. These systems utilize enclosed structures (e.g., greenhouses, indoor farms, etc.) that allow for the control of environmental conditions, allowing for crop growth year-round. Advances in CEA technologies are enabling greater production in small CEA systems that are largely compatible with remote community operational constraints. However, most CEA systems are used for leafy green production, which may not align with community-defined food preferences, cultural practices, or dietary needs. Further, CEA operations tend to prioritize efficiency and productivity, with comparatively less attention paid to questions of crop relevance, acceptability, and food sovereignty. Drawing upon a scoping review methodology, the author summarizes how CEA has been used or proposed to support the production of foods that align with community preferences and food sovereignty goals, with a focus on northern North America, which experiences a limited outdoor growing season. Findings consider how decisions about CEA infrastructure, governance, and crop selection are made and whose perspectives are reflected in these processes. Attention is paid to how community engagement, culturally relevant foods, and local control over food production are addressed within the literature. By synthesizing existing knowledge and identifying gaps, this work aims to support dialogue between researchers, policymakers, and communities. The presentation invites discussion on how CEA can move beyond a purely technological solution toward relational, community-driven approaches that strengthen equitable and sustainable food systems.
Urban agriculture: Rooted In community, growing for the future
Carey Yeoman
The Barrett Centre of Innovation in Sustainable Urban Agriculture at Durham College advances Ontario’s agrifood sector through an integrated applied research model grounded in practice at the Barrett Urban Farm. Our work centres on sustainable production, resilient food‑system development, evidence‑based policy, and the evaluation and deployment of emerging agritechnologies. Current initiatives center the farm as an essential community hub, focused on strengthening small‑scale and localized food production, supporting equity‑driven partnerships, diversifying grower revenue, and optimizing agritechnology for educational, commercial, and community benefit. The presentation will highlight four interrelated domains of research and impact that collectively demonstrate the strategic value of urban agriculture as a platform for innovation, community resilience, and stability within larger food systems.
1. The Barrett Urban Farm as a Living Laboratory: The Barrett Urban Farm operationalizes an applied research environment that integrates production, distribution, and community engagement. Key outcomes include modelling urban agriculture as an economic stabilizer, testing revenue‑diversification strategies for small producers, and demonstrating the importance of experiential learning and early agrotechnology adoption. The site also supports equity‑driven partnerships and accessible incubator spaces for students and community partners.
2. Research and Policy Innovation Across the Greater Golden Horseshoe. Findings from Growing Opportunity: An Action Plan to Unleash the Economic Potential of Urban Agriculture in the Greater Golden Horseshoe (to be published March 2026) inform municipal planning frameworks and highlight policy uptake already occurring in Durham Region to replicated this model.
3. Agritechnology Evaluation and Workforce Preparation: Through work‑integrated learning and collaboration with innovation partners, the Centre conducts real‑time market validation, user experience assessment, and sustainability analysis of emerging agritechnologies.
4. Durham Food System Strategy (2025–2028): In partnership with regional organizations, the Centre is co‑developing a comprehensive food‑system strategy focused on shared problem definition, collective‑impact governance, evidence‑driven interventions, and strengthened institutional capacity.
Presentations - Critical food pedagogy and food justice movements (Part 2)
Community-based critical food pedagogies in the Greater Toronto Area
Kihan Yoon-Henderson
There is growing interest in the development of critical food pedagogies, that is, deeply considering what, and importantly how, we teach and learn about food for sustainable and equitable food systems transformations (Sumner, 2016). At the same time, there is renewed focus on the potential of urban agriculture (UA) to address community food security needs, among providing a range of other socio-ecological benefits. Critical geographical scholarship also highlights the explicitly spatialized political dimensions of community-based UA. This panel presentation will put these three areas of interest together ‚ critical food pedagogies, UA, and critical geographical scholarship ‚ through a case study of community-based urban farms in the Greater Toronto Area. Specifically, this presentation will highlight the impact of community-based critical food pedagogies on movements for equitable and justice-oriented urban (and urban food) futures.
Is it possible to just teach food studies? Making the road by walking in an age of polycrisis/permacrisis
Michael Classens
Critical food pedagogy, while still quite nascent, is at a forced inflection point. The breadth and depth of the polycrisis / permacrisis, combined with ongoing austerity and authoritarian overreach in the postsecondary sector have destabilized the conceptual and practical moorings of the subfield. In such challenging times, I return to a scholar whose work is foundational to critical food pedagogy, Paulo Freire, specifically his work in conversation with Myles Horton. Thinking with Freire and Horton, I explore the challenges facing critical food pedagogy in the contemporary moment ‚ existential, conceptual, and practical. I then extend Horton‚ metaphor of bootlegged education, to explore the contours and possible utility of a bootlegged food pedagogy.
A recipe for success for food literacy programs: A Québec case study
Alicia Martin
Food literacy education opportunities are increasingly important with a growing need to improve the sustainability of food systems and to address high rates of chronic diseases. Regardless of this need, food literacy education in elementary and secondary schools in Canada is largely voluntary except for some broad nutrition education and learning about Canada’s Food Guide. To address this gap, several non-profit organizations and champion educators are being creative to food and food systems. Even though Quebec has a food policy promoting improving food literacy, this is the case in Quebec, where the majority of food literacy education includes going above and beyond basic curricula expectations. Thus, the objective of this research was to examine a “recipe for success” of food literacy interventions in Quebec schools through case study interviews (n=16). In this presentation I will discuss findings from semi-structured interviews conducted with key food literacy education organizations and educators across the province. Elements for a recipe for success for food literacy education programming were raised by interview participants including the administrative support of the school in question, support for educators (e.g., resources including food, lesson plans), and the integration of food in curricula was noted as missing but an element that could better support food education. Key barriers were also identified, including inadequate infrastructure in schools (e.g., minimal or outdated kitchen classrooms, not designed for children), not enough staff training for knowing how to incorporate food into lesson plans or a lack of knowledge of food safety, a lack of integration of food in curricula, and minimal resources (i.e., finances). These findings will inform policy for food literacy education such improved inclusion of food literacy in curricula documents, better school infrastructure design including kitchen classrooms fit for children, improved professional development for educators, and institutional support for these endeavours.
Nurturing agents of change: Chefs engaging post-secondary non-culinary students in the action of food systems transformation
Jennifer Mitsche, Lori Stahlbrand, Miriam Streiman, Tate Novak, Wendy Mah, Ekta Maheshwari, Julie Montgomery, Lucy Godoy, Luis Valenzuela
Food systems sustainability is an engagement exercise; and if we consider the campus to be in itself a site for useful learning instead of simply a site where learning happens (Orr, 1993), we can engage thousands of students in moving the needle on campus food system sustainability, while fostering the curiosity and skills necessary to continue their efforts beyond campus. This presentation is a report on the action and outcomes of the first three years of the Communal Lunch Program, an interdisciplinary food equity, literacy, and community-building initiative launched in 2023 at George Brown Polytechnic. Informed by each chef collaborator’s commitment to food systems transformation, the program has evolved into an intricate network of chefs, faculty, and students who come together each week for informal cooking sessions and communal lunches, where chefs and Food Studies students teach and support non-culinary students as they develop critical food literacy. As an organism of collaborations, we have demonstrated this program’s capacity to joyously engage students in an experiential pedagogy of food systems care.
Learning, Practicing and Fighting for Food Justice
Nicole Graziano
Food injustice is a persistent issue across Toronto, where inequities in access to affordable and culturally appropriate food is on the rise. In response to this, there is a growing movement of community organizations, such as The Stop Community Food Center (The Stop) and FoodShare Toronto, operating on the front lines of the struggle for food justice in the GTA. Here, critical food pedagogy emerges as an important response for community organizations faced with governments that fail to address the disjuncture between policy commitments and lived realities. Although critical food pedagogy does offer a promising means of responding to the governance gaps leading to food injustice, its role within community-based work remains underexplored. More specifically, I examine how The Stop and Food Share Toronto understand and describe the governance issues they face and explore how they deploy education (or rather, critical food pedagogy broadly conceived) as a response.
FSC Education Session - Incorporating equity into your organization
More information to come. Watch this space!
Film Screening - Agriculture urbaine, écho des voix afrodescendantes à Tiohtiá:ke
More information to come.