With the ever increasing population, agricultural land is turning into a thing of the past. Urban agriculture provides a decent way to recover a more natural, more traditional, more ecological, and much healthier way of life in the middle of all the urban chaos.
The potential for the city to have the majority of its own fresh vegetable and herbs is enormous whilst urban agriculture is hidden mainly in backyards and community gardens, it doesn't mean that without the right organization this couldn't be a quite profitable market.
With the recession and individuals leaning towards a healthier lifestyle this urban gardening is becoming very popular, but there are many barriers preventing an efficient approach, for example when you are living in Toronto apartments. That is all starting to change though, with initiatives and charities trying to work through the obstacles and make urban agriculture easier to do.
Moving forward and realizing that Urban Agriculture is the way forward, the Toronto Board of Health devised a sub-committee called Toronto Food Policy Council, in 1991. It intends to develop policies and programs advancing food security in partnership with diverse business and community groups.
One of the best known organizations involved with urban farming is Foodshare. A long-term attitude to hunger and food concerns requires individuals to be creative, not to look at the short term goals but a long term way of life.
Foodshare in not the only group who are supporting this campaign, another project called The Stop Community Food Centre is giving its voice to change. This centre, who recently had a visit from the famous chef Jamie Oliver, believes that access to healthy food should be treat with dignity, working together as a community to stamp out inequality.
The Toronto Urban Farm is a partnership between the City of Toronto and Toronto and Region Conservation that hopes to enlist youth and the community in urban organic farming, leadership building, environmental stewardship, and health promotion.
An enterprise aimed at young people established by young people is the Young Urban Farmers. Created in 2009 by university students, they want to show that gardening can be fun and their main goal is to help individuals understand this and grow their own fresh food.
It’s best to grow vegetables that grow quickly, for example: tomatoes, green beans, green onions, lettuces, Swiss chard, radishes, cucumbers, and zucchini. One of the first rules of gardening is to avoid planting the same thing year after year, this will cause the soil to be unhealthy, you will encourage insects and could end up with diseases.
It’s also a good idea to grow plants that are supportive to each other, as it seems to have some positive effects in fighting with pests.
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