How an urban farming co-ordinator shops and eats with health and tradition in mind | Canada Voices

Inside Toronto Metropolitan University’s health sciences building, students conduct labs, take notes and prepare for finals. Eight floors above the classrooms and offices, Nicole Austin spends her days sowing seeds, tending crops and harvesting food.

Austin has been growing a variety of crops since 2021, when she launched the Harvest Collective and the Learning Circle programs at TMU’s Urban Farm – a project that’s given students, faculty and the broader community the ability to grow fresh produce and learn about farming.

The initiative is spread across two rooftops, on top of TMU’s health sciences building and engineering centre. There, Austin grows okra, callaloo and Scotch bonnet peppers: crops with deep cultural significance for Toronto’s large African and Caribbean communities.

The program is a Black Food Sovereignty Initiative, a broader effort to increase the access Toronto’s Black communities have to healthy, culturally appropriate food that is grown sustainably.

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According to Statistics Canada data published in 2023, Black Canadians had one of the highest rates of food insecurity in the country at 38 per cent.

Last year, the Urban Farm grew 22 crops, including seven medicinal crops from the African diaspora such as cerasee (or bitter melon), which is brewed into a tea to reduce blood pressure, support kidney and liver health and lower blood sugar levels for people with diabetes.

“We think of the farm as a living lab. It feeds people and allows communities to reclaim knowledge, but we also do research studies,” says Austin, noting the Ecological Farmers Association of Ontario recently experimented with a new strain of more resilient fava beans at the farm. She also shares space with Samantha Williams, who runs an Indigenous-led farm program similar to Austin’s.

The students who grow food at the farm distribute it in three ways: one-third is sold at a fair-market rate, another third is sold at a discounted student rate and the final portion is donated to community programs.

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Many of the foods grown at the Urban Farm were staples in Austin’s household, where her grandmother cooked Caribbean staples such as ackee and salt fish – Jamaica’s national dish of sautéed ackee fruit and salted cod – as well as callaloo, an iron-rich leafy green native to the Caribbean.

Austin still follows her grandmother’s advice of cooking meals from scratch as much as possible. But she also experiments with cooking different cuisines, such as Indian and Thai, relying on the green grocers and small shops around Toronto’s Chinatown and Little India to supply the ingredients.

How I save money on groceries: I prioritize buying frozen fruits and vegetables grown in Canada throughout the winter, which are cheaper and better quality than the imported stuff. Canned fish such as salmon or sardines are cheaper than fresh, and very nutritious.

How I splurge on groceries: I sometimes splurge on wild-caught fish with marine stewardship council certification, which indicates it’s been caught sustainably. I typically go to a fishmonger at St. Lawrence Market for catches such as swordfish steaks, a piece of cod or rainbow trout.

The hardest shopping habit to keep up: I avoid products sold in plastic and avoid the grocery stores that sell them that way. I enjoy farmers’ markets, but it’s not always practical to do my grocery shopping there, since they don’t have the same convenient hours as grocery stores.

How I’ve changed my eating habits recently: I’m intentional about avoiding processed foods. Packaged and prepared foods can be so convenient, and are easily bought around the university while I’m at work. I pre-empt temptation by preparing my lunch daily and planning my dinners, so I have something to look forward to when I go home.

Five items always in my cart:

1. Coconut milk – Aroy-D – $2.19: Coconut milk goes into a lot of staple Caribbean dishes such as red pea soup and rice and peas. I enjoy this one since it’s made with 99 per cent coconut milk; some of the other brands I’ve come across have fillers. I also use it in a Thai coconut soup I often make, tom kha gai, which carries protein and vegetables very well.
2. Pearl barley – PC Blue Menu – $2.75: I try to use this in place of rice to accompany a lot of my dishes. It has a nutty flavour, is high in fibre and contains iron.
3. Canadian maple syrup – Old Fashioned Maple Crest – $16.97 for one litre: This is great to sweeten food. I like the depth of flavour it gives my dishes. Just make sure to keep it in the fridge.
4. Starfruit – $2 each: This fruit is a splurge for me. It can be costly, but it’s a nice treat, along with dragonfruit and passion fruit, which remind me of the Caribbean.
5. Curry powder – Cool Runnings – $3.99: Yellow curry goes into a lot of Caribbean and West Indian dishes, including curry chicken, which we make with Scotch bonnet pepper, potatoes and carrots.