Torontoist » Agriculture

Freshness in Frosty Times

Toronto green thumbs share their winter gardening tips

As we, the people of Toronto, start to bury our faces in our scarves and huddle a little closer together in bus shelters, one crowd remains admirably unfazed by the winter—our gardeners. Toronto’s gardeners refuse to let any temperature stop their sprouting ventures and often welcome the change in season with gusto. These courageous folks [...]

Foodstock Takes Us on a Magical Forest Food Adventure

Farmers, chefs, food activists, and food lovers gathered Sunday to celebrate the harvest and raise awareness of a proposed megaquarry in the heart of Ontario farmland.

Almost two years ago, we wrote about some potato farmers in Melancthon, a small community about 90 minutes drive northwest of Toronto. They were worried about plans a corporation called the Highland Companies had recently announced, to dig a giant limestone quarry in the middle of the agricultural region, with concerns ranging from effects on [...]

Scene: Quarry Protest March

WHERE: Highway 124 near Melancthon, Ontario WHEN: 10 a.m. on Tuesday April 26 WHAT: A march from Toronto to the heart of Ontario’s potato farm region to protest a proposed mega-quarry continued on its fifth and last day yesterday. The last leg of the walk started at a doughnut shop at the intersections of Highway [...]

Forget Paving Paradise, Let’s Just Dig a Giant Hole in It

Farmers in Melanchton, Ontario, begin a long fight against a giant limestone quarry—the largest proposed for North America.

Editor’s note: Since we first published this story, the Highland Companies have filed their paperwork seeking permission from the province to open the quarry. The Ontario government responded by required a full environmental assessment of the proposal, which will take several years to complete. Farmers in Melancthon are meanwhile working to continue raising awareness of [...]

Farm and the City

Laura Reinsborough of Not Far From the Tree. Photo by Hamutal Dotan/Torontoist. The food we eat, and the sources thereof, have become the subjects of increasing attention over the past few years. In an attempt to bring farmers and the people they feed closer together, Slow Food Toronto hosted its second annual Farm-to-Home Fair at [...]

Chew On This

Photo of the rooftop gardens at 401 Richmond by wyliespoon. Urban agriculture is the new green. Now that we’ve got trash reduction, active transportation, and energy conservation well-entrenched in our collective consciousness it’s time for the next frontier in city-based environmentalism, and our relationship to food is it. “Carrot City,” an exhibit showing at the [...]

Food Matters

Photo by Hamutal Dotan/Torontoist. Mark Bittman, a.k.a. The Minimalist, has built a career out of making home-cooking an accessible, manageable, enjoyable activity for those who feel too harried or busy to spend much time in the kitchen. It’s a noble project, one for which he has been winning widespread recognition. Bittman’s How to Cook Everything [...]

Let Them Eat Oranges!

As Torontoist reported recently, City Council has been considering a local food procurement policy, which would mandate increasing the proportion of food that city departments purchase from GTA farmers. Though the proposal that made it to council was substantially more modest than the version first proposed by city staff, it too faced some resistance. Councillor [...]

Baby Steps Are Better Than Nothing

Photo by Simone from the Torontoist Flickr Pool. Yesterday morning the City’s Government Management Committee debated a proposal to purchase more of its food supplies locally [PDF]. The City is quite a large supplier of food (providing meals in many daycare centres and nursing homes, for instance); both by making a practical commitment and by [...]

My Other City is a Farm

Photo by mama loo from the Torontoist Flickr Pool. Cities can, should, and may need to start producing much of their own food. Four panellists—a farmer, an historian, an architect, and an activist—collectively presented a vision of cities as centres of agriculture at the From the Ground Up lecture, held Wednesday night at the Gardiner [...]

Food Porn Comes to Life

The second annual Picnic at the Brick Works was held this past Sunday, and it was a veritable extravaganza of foodie fun. From the simple (sliced and dressed heirloom tomatoes) to the avant-garde (chocolate beet cakes, anyone?), local ingredients and chefs showed off their stuff. The goal of the picnic is to highlight local and [...]

Hey Food!

October 16 is the day that the Walt Disney Company was founded (1923), the day that Trudeau invoked the War Measures Act in response to the October Crisis terrorist kidnapping (1970), and the day that President Bush signed into law the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution (2002). It is also, though [...]