Toronto Youth Food Policy Council |

March 8, 2014
by MeShell
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Advocacy Discussion Sessions on the Municipal Elections & Food

Toronto is electing a new government this year! We want to engage our municipal government candidates about food issues, and we want youth to be informed about the upcoming election. In order to make this happen, we have been having meet-up discussions to brainstorm and plan a project around the election. (Read our meeting summaries from our meetings on January 21 and February 25.)

Our project has three stages:

Ask youth what food issues they would like to talk to their municipal government candidates about.
Based on what we hear, ask for candidate positions on a few key food issues.
Present the candidate responses back to youth to help them make informed election decisions.

So far, we have been focusing on the first stage and so we distributed a survey to the TYFPC community. We received 67 responses to the question: What food issues are important for you to hear the Mayoral and City Council candidates discuss before the election in October?

The issues that came out as most important (and the percentage of survey respondents that selected them) are:

Food access (57%)
Funding to community food organizations (37%)
Urban agriculture (33%)

These are the issues that we will be focusing on, at least for now, as we move the project forward.

At this point, we are also planning for stage two and thinking about other organizations that we can collaborate with on this project. We are exploring options in the food movement, as well as other youth organizations.

If you would like to get involved in this project, we will be hosting our next discussion group on March 20^th at 6pm (location TBA). You can keep updated by checking our blog and our Facebook page, or by emailing Kaylen, Advocacy Committee Co-Lead, at kfredrickson@tyfpc.ca.

March 3, 2014
by Kaylen Fredrickson
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Discussion Meet-Up February 25: Food and the Upcoming Municipal Election: Meeting Summary and Next Steps

Our meeting on February 25, 2014 involved check-ins from our last meeting (Read about that meeting here!), as well as more brainstorming and homework tasks.

First, we went over the results of the survey that we designed to assess which food issues were important to our community. We asked: What food issues are important for you to hear the Mayoral and City Council candidates discuss before the election in October? As of our meeting on February 25, 67 people had responded to the survey. Four issues came out as most important:

Food access
Funding to community food organizations
Urban gardening
Institutional food

Based on the fact that institutional food (particularly food in schools) is already getting a lot of attention, we have decided that, for now, we will focus on the other three issues as we move our project forward.

We think that the three issues have interesting intersections for youth, particularly around income and job opportunities. And we will keep exploring what these issues really mean to youth in our upcoming meetings.

Homework for next meeting includes discussing:

Role of school trustees and if we should be thinking about including them in this project
What is the municipal government jurisdiction in relation to our three main food issues
Identifying other youth organizations that may want to partner with us
Update about what the TFPC is organizing and how we can collaborate

Our next meeting will be on Thursday, March 20^th at 6pm. Location TBA. (More details will be posted on our blog and on our Facebook closer to the event.) If you would like to join us or would like more information please contact Kaylen, Advocacy Committee Co-lead, at kfredrickson@tyfpc.ca.

March 3, 2014
by Jessica Reeve
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TYFPC and Food Forward’s Building Roots Advocacy Workshop

On Wednesday February 26th, 2014 Toronto Youth Food Policy Council members Anne Siu and Jessica Reeve participated in a workshop run in partnership with Lisa Kates and Darcy Higgins from Food Forward’s Building Roots program at the Oriole Community Centre near Don Mills and Sheppard. The workshop provided a great platform for the TYFPC to introduce our Advocacy Toolkit for the first time and to build on those tools by looking at ways t0 get involved and to advocate for food to be incorporated into development plans, and into municipal policies in general.

The participants in this workshop came from a wide variety of backgrounds and had differing levels of political engagement. They all expressed an interest in pushing this advocacy forward and provided helpful feedback on the advocacy tools that will soon be available on the TYFPC website.

These tools include how to communicate with your City Councillor, how to write to City officials, and how to present effective public deputations. It is important to note that this toolkit remains a work in progress and we hope to incorporate feedback, as well as additional tools, as demand for these tools is generated. Stay tuned for more toolkit posts! Continue Reading →

February 27, 2014
by Jessica Reeve
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Review: Toronto’s Guide for Soil Testing in Urban Gardens

Article by Lyubov Lytvyn

Urban agriculture has a number of benefits for cities, including enlivening communities, improving citizen physical and mental health, and ultimately reducing the collective carbon footprint. It has been recognized as an opportunity to engage city residents, create employment, as well as improve food security and health with access to fresh, culturally appropriate produce at a low cost. With such potential in mind, there has been tremendous effort in Toronto to increase urban agriculture. The Metcalf Foundation published a report on Scaling Up Urban Agriculture in Toronto in 2010, and the Toronto Food Policy Council and its community partners followed up with the GrowTO Urban Agriculture Plan for Toronto in 2012, which was a central document in a recent landmark report to Toronto City Council on the Toronto Agriculture Program in November 2013. One of the barriers identified in expanding urban agriculture was the necessity, yet difficulty, of proper soil testing. While the Greater Toronto Area has some of the best soil available, city land is exposed to contamination from surrounding buildings and cars, and may have had other uses prior to being a potential gardening space. The City of Toronto has recognized this as a way to support the movement, and Toronto Public Health (TPH) has recently put out a guideline for urban soil assessment, in collaboration with Parks, Forestry and Recreation (PF&R), and in consultation with the Toronto Environment Office (TEO). Continue Reading →

February 18, 2014
by Kaylen Fredrickson
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Discussion Meet-Up February 25: Food and the Upcoming Municipal Election

Come to the CSI Coffee Pub on Tuesday, February 25 at 6:00pm to discuss the upcoming municipal election and help us move our election project forward.

Our project has three stages:

Ask youth what food issues they would like to talk to their municipal government candidates about.
Based on what we hear, ask for candidate positions on a few key food issues.
Present the candidate responses back to youth to help them make informed election decisions.

We are currently working on stage 1 (if you haven’t already, please fill out the survey) and researching how best to go about stage 2. At this discussion we will be brainstorming ideas and also looking for volunteers to take on some tasks related to this project. To read more about what we’ve accomplished so far, read the summary from our last meeting.

You can RSVP for this event on Facebook or by emailing kfredrickson@tyfpc.ca.

If you have any questions or would like more information about this project, please contact Kaylen, Advocacy Committee Co-Lead, at kfredrickson@tyfpc.ca.