While you all patiently wait for the publication of our first ever Anthology, the Toronto Youth Food Policy Council wishes to spotlight some of the young talented artists that submitted pieces to amplify their art and voice within the TYFPC community.
Starting off strong, we have DairySam:
Sam is a Queer, Brown and Disabled artist. They use many mediums, such as illustration, comics, printmaking, fabric and textiles, ceramics, resin and other sculptural work, and digital such as film and animation. They love playing with colors, characters and conceptual visuals to share stories.
Check out the wonderful colours and characters that they have created and shared with the world at their website (You might even want to buy something!): https://dairysam.format.com/
If you are a fan of the artwork and would like to support DairySam, you can drop a donation of any size to their paypal! paypal.me/SameenaAnis
It’s that time of year again! The TYFPC is seeking new members for the 2026-27 council.
The TYFPC seeks to engage, build and mobilize youth to accelerate municipal food policy change and co-create a local, sustainable, and just food system in Toronto. We exist to provide a youth perspective on Toronto’s food community and to provide a unique space for youth to network, support and learn from one another, in order to better participate and innovate the food system around them.
This year, we have decided to expand out definition of youth to ages 16-35 (previously capped at 30). So if you have been following our group but you’ve been above the cap, its your opportunity to get involved now!
We will be recruiting about 6 individuals to join the council on a volunteer basis to network, educate and advocate for a better food system on behalf of the youth community in Ontario. Our ideal candidates are enthusiastic, motivated, have knowledge of food systems, food insecurity, food justice and food policy and interested in activating positive change within our food system!
Additional desired skills for members this year include: Experience in grant applications, administrative skills, social media marketing, website design, event organization, writing… to name a few!!
The deadline to apply is Friday, July 3rd, 2026 at 11:59 pm!
On February 12th, members of the TYFPC’s Advocacy and Education Committee, Tate and Andrea, visited the Good Food Centre (GFC) at TMU (Toronto Metropolitan University) and met with Rob Howard, the coordinator of the Centre. This was an incredible opportunity to exchange knowledge and ideas in the realm of food insecurity of students in need.
The Good Food Centre operates in service of any and all TMU students who face any level of food insecurity, meaning the inability to obtain food meeting one’s dietary needs.
The GFC works closely and under the Daily Bread Food Bank as a member of their Member Agency Program. The Good Food Centre also funds “The Common Pot”, which has a free soup program once a week on Wednesdays. Common Pot is entirely run by students of Toronto Metropolitan University. It’s an external partnership, so Common Pot is not under the TMU umbrella.
How Does the GFC Work?
To be able to use the Good Food Centre, students first must register as a member, which can be done here: https://yourtmsu.ca/services/food/intake/. Of note is that Tuesdays are the busiest time for food. The Centre operates using a “shopping cart” model – students arrive and are provided limits per section. In other words, they have the ability to choose their own food through the aisles of shelf-stable, refrigerated, and even frozen foods to best find what suits their needs, while also allowing enough for other students in need. The Centre also shares accessible recipes and blog posts for students!
Incredibly, the Good Food Centre works closely with TMU’s own rooftop garden! And the best part is, the Centre is open all year round and remains accessible throughout the Summer, too.
Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays 2:30PM – 5:30PM
The Centre is located at: Student Centre SCC B-03A, basement, former CopyRITE office (55 Gould St.)
Image: Google Maps
A Reflection
We bounced off many ideas and reflections with Rob Howard, the Centre’s coordinator. The Good Food Centre’s entire mission to provide free food to students remains self-informed in that it maintains active by conducting surveys to their student demographics to find out what groups of folks are most in need, and by asking what food resources are most needed. The GFC thereby evolves to meet the needs of all of the students they engage with, both in-person, and anonymously through conducted surveys.
The Toronto Youth Food Policy Council endorses the mission of TMU’s Good Food Centre, especially in that centres such as this drive the goal to provide free food for all, especially to groups in need (in this case, youth who continuously face financial barriers to food access given the cost of living crisis), and especially culturally-relevant and nutritious foods. We at the Council believe that creating and expanding across networks close to home is a key driver in promoting more sustainable food systems and strengthening communities. As a voice for youth 30 and under in Toronto, we aim to inspire every person to be concerned with food-secure futures.
Please reach out to us at our contact information below if you’d like to be featured in one of our posts and to continue the dialogue of food-secure futures for youth and all!
On November 19, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations celebrated Food, Agriculture, and Water Day at the 29th United Nations Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP29). While it may sound like just another themed event on the COP agenda, this issue is extremely important, as it highlights something we don’t appreciate enough: the ways in which all sectors in our society, including food, water, climate and health, are interconnected. Ignoring these connections has historically led to insufficient solutions that fail to address the root of emerging problems.
For a long time, issues within these areas were treated separately, as water management focused on hygiene and access, food systems research focused on food production and distribution, and climate scientists focused on climate graphs and emissions trends. Each group worked in its own silo, with its own priorities, even though the systems they were looking at were deeply connected to others. In separating these issues, we lost sight of the bigger picture and created solutions that lacked efficiency and created unintended consequences, as you can’t anticipate what you don’t know.
Thus, days like Food, Agriculture and Water Day matter, as they push politicians, scientists, and governments to step back and recognize how these systems intersect. Understanding these connections is the first step to something that is urgently needed, the holistic One Health approach. One Health is a framework which tries to highlight the interconnections between human, animal and environmental health. It asserts that you can’t protect one without thinking of the others due to feedback loops within our system. When we apply this way of thinking to global challenges such as food insecurity, climate change, or water scarcity, the solutions become more practical and sustainable.
This is evident in the management of water. Water is important for drinking and sanitation, as well as agriculture, ecosystem health, and general health across all sectors. However, climate change is having a great impact, as it’s directly reducing access to clean and reliable freshwater through rising temperatures, changes in rainfall patterns, shrinking snowpacks, and the depletion of rivers and groundwater (US EPA, 2022). These changes mean that many regions now face both reduced water quantity and poorer water quality at the same time, creating a cascade of effects across human, animal, and environmental systems (US EPA, 2022).
The first industry affected by this reduced supply is agriculture. Crops need a consistent supply of freshwater to grow, as without it, yields decline, resulting in frequent crop failures and thus economic instability for farmers. Moreover, climate change impacts quality as well as quantity. An increase in heavy rains, extended heat waves, and other extreme weather events increases pollution and runoff. When farms depend on such polluted water, it takes a toll on food safety, soil and water health, and even the health of the workers and animals in those areas, thus creating a feedback loop where pressure in one system amplifies pressure in another
In addition to these issues, climate change is affecting nutritional quality. The increase in carbon dioxide levels lowers the protein content and essential minerals like zinc, iron, and magnesium in staple crops. Research has shown that “high-yielding fruits such as apples, oranges, mango, guava, banana, and vegetables such as tomato and potato have lost their nutritional density by up to 25-50% or more during the last 50 to 70 years” (Bhardwaj et al., 2024). Thus, even if crop yields stay the same, the nutritional value per serving will drop, thus requiring a greater abundance of food to meet the same nutritional value.
This has serious One Health implications, as lower nutrient density increases malnutrition and micronutrient deficiencies in humans, decreases the feed quality for livestock and wildlife, and pushes farmers toward more intensive practices that require more land and water. Through these examples, it’s quite evident just how interconnected the various systems are. Thus, Food, Agriculture, and Water Day is a reminder that global challenges aren’t isolated problems, they are interconnected systems. If we want real progress, our solutions need to reflect that. One Health gives us the framework to do exactly that as it forces us to think about integrated solutions and long-term impacts and resilience that protect human health, animal health, and ecosystem health.
References
Bhardwaj, R. L., Parashar, A., Parewa, H. P., & Vyas, L. (2024). An Alarming Decline in the Nutritional Quality of Foods: The Biggest Challenge for Future Generations’ Health. Foods, 13(6), 877. https://doi.org/10.3390/foods13060877
US EPA. (2022, October 18). Climate Change Impacts on Freshwater Resources. Www.epa.gov. https://www.epa.gov/climateimpacts/climate-change-impacts-freshwater-resources
We’ve rung in an updated crew of council members, and as our first blog post of the 2025-2026 council year, we thought we’d start it out by a very belated Happy World Food Day 2025, which is yearly on October 16th.
What is World Food Day?
World Food Day is a global acknowledgement and celebration of a food-secure future, embracing sustainable transitions that are peaceful and prosperous (FAO, 2025). This day takes on a collaborative approach, stringing together calls from governments, communities, and organizations all across the world. It’s a call to transform our current food system for food futures full of harmony and health.
Two major institutions that have supported World Food Day are both the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the United Nations, and the theme for 2025 is “Hand in hand for better food and a better future” (United Nations, 2025). Amazingly, 2025 marks the 80th anniversary of both of these groups. The groups remind the world of the importance of shifting global focus to ensuring a much more equitable food system for the entire world.
World Food Day is also widely commemorated by the World Food Programme, the World Health Organization (WHO), and the International Fund for Agricultural Development (Wikipedia, 2025). Insights from these organizations include many regarding numbers on hunger and food security: for example, according to the WHO, around 733 million experienced hunger in 2023 (2024), setting potential setbacks for achieving the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), a major goal to be Zero Hunger by 2030 (WHO, 2024). The report that outlined this major statistic of global hunger highlights that this sets the world back about 15 years (WHO, 2024), a statistic that should be extremely alarming among these times of severe food insecurity and high levels of undernourishment.
There is clearly a need for strong networks and collaboration across these global alliances to continue and grow in order to tackle the ongoing crisis of food insecurity. At the Toronto Youth Food Policy Council, we try to think globally by primarily acting locally.
Close to Home
The TYFPC has many partnerships in the Toronto area that we support. These include but are not limited to:
World Food Forum, Ontario Chapter (Instagram: @wff_ontario_chapter)
The Coalition for Healthy School Food (https://www.healthyschoolfood.ca/ )
We at the council believe that creating and expanding across networks close to home is a key driver in promoting more sustainable food systems and strengthening communities. We believe that even small actions like mutual aid and learning from experts in food policy are key in achieving better food futures. As a voice for youth 30 and under in Toronto, we aim to inspire every person to be concerned with food secure futures.
Image: United Nations, 2025 (https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/fast-facts-what-are-sustainable-food-systems/)
